X-Com: Beneath Malevolent Skies
by thalgrond
Summary: Probes rain from the sky and unseen beings stalk the streets. A fleet of hostile spacecraft orbit the sun, and there seems no way of stopping the alien menace, only of delaying the inevitable. Funding X-Com is the world's final gambit, but few truly expect it to succeed. (Loosely based on Long War. Follows several characters, both canon and OC. Be warned: some die.)
1. Landfall Part 1

_There was no warning before they came. One day, humanity were just living their normal lives. We had our own problems, sure, but for the most part, we were all secure in the knowledge that we were safe. We were masters of our own destiny, just as we ever had been. But then came Landfall..._

* * *

Vahlen stepped outside into the night air and closed the sliding glass door behind her. From inside the apartment, she could still hear the pounding music, but it was muted and distant now. She sighed in relief, and walked across the balcony to the railing, leaning against it and looking out at the distant skyline of Berlin, just visible over the rooftops of the nearby buildings. She placed her empty glass carefully on the railing and then rubbed at her temples, grimacing. The bride certainly did like her EDM, and the bachelorette party's organizers had gone all out with catering to that preference.

Behind her, the door slid open again, blasting her with another dose of heavy bass and synth riffs, then just as quickly slid shut again. A moment later, a second woman joined her at the railing. Vahlen glanced over at her, quickly taking in the woman's youthful features, dark complexion, curly hair and light green dress. Then she turned toward the horizon again. There were a few moments of silence, then the other woman said, in halting and heavily-accented German, "Hey, you're Hanna's... um... scientist friend, are you? Umm... Mira?"

"Moira," she corrected. "Moira Vahlen."

"Moira? Okay. Well, I'm Lily," responded the younger woman, and extended her hand. Vahlen shook it firmly, and.

"Are you English?" Moira asked.

"Ah. Um, accent gave me away, did it? Yes, um, Hanna met me at art school."

"Ah. I see. Well," she said, transitioning smoothly to English, less heavily accented and more fluent than Lily's German had been. "I can speak English if it makes you more comfortable."

"Oh. That's nice. Thanks," Lily responded, also in English.

They lapsed into silence for a moment longer, then Lily pointed out "Your glass is empty."

"Yes, I was just thinking I might go remedy that. Maybe once this song is over."

"Heh. I hear you there. Hanna's great, but, y'know, it's her party, so they tailored the music to her music tastes, and... well..."

"Yes. But I think we can give her this one, right? I would toast the bride, but..." she raised her empty glass with a wry smile, then turned around and leaned against the banister with a sigh. "This isn't usually my sort of evening anyhow. I actually only have this one dress." She indicated the red gown she was wearing.

"Oh? What would you usually be, um..."

"If I weren't here, I would be at my lab downtown. Full getup. White lab coat and everything. Don't get me wrong, I love Hanna, I wish her luck and I'm happy to be here, but... like I said, this isn't what I'm used to."

"What do you do at the lab?"

"Applied biochemistry."

"Meaning...?"

Vahlen braced herself. She never knew quite how people would react when she told them what she did, but she had established some expectations. Usually confusion, followed by laughter when she explained. "Astrobiology."

Lily seemed taken aback for a moment, then simply said "Huh. So, like, alien autopsies and stuff?"

"Well, no. Obviously, I have no real specimens to study. What I do there is primarily theoretical, with some occasional biochemical experiments. Currently, I have the team focusing primarily on polar molecular research... erm... that is... trying to figure out if life is possible in a sea of saline ammonia rather than water. We've been trying to make lipid bilayers form in ammonia-methane cryo-solutions and hyper-saline suspensions like those found on certain parts of the moon Titan. It's difficult, not because of the lipid bilayer- that's easy enough to catalyse- but due simply to the fact that most of the lipids we use in biochem on Earth freeze solid when exposed to the temperatures we're working with, or denature on contact with the chemical solution." Vahlen was ready at this point to launch into a full-blown lecture. However, she caught herself just in time. In her experience, not everyone was as excited about xeno-bacterial genesis as she was. "But, ah, telling you any more than that will require at least half an hour, and I suspect you'll be wanting to go back to the bachelorette party. Tell me when the presents come out, will you? I want to see Hanna's reaction to mine."

Vahlen smiled at the younger woman and turned back toward the skyline. Lily stood quietly beside her for a moment, then reached out and snatched Vahlen's glass from its resting place on the railing and examined the red wine residue left at the bottom. "Tell you what, Moira Vahlen," she said, smiling, "I'll go refill this, and then you can explain to me what some of those words you just used mean." Then, without waiting for a response, she strode back to the glass door and walked inside, letting out another blast of the loud music from inside.

Vahlen was confused but pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. Perhaps she would enjoy the evening after all.

She was so lost in thought, trying to organize concepts in her mind into something that would be intelligible to a beginner like Lily, that she nearly missed the flash of orange that emanated from the city center. She spotted it out of the corner of her eye, and her head turned reflexively to look at the source of the flash. It was gone now, though, and she was just starting to think it might have been her imagination when she spotted the second brilliant orange speck streak across the sky and disappear behind one of the tall buildings downtown.

She stared at the skyline, no longer just for something to look at, but with powerful intensity. When she saw the third orange speck moments later, she knew she wasn't just seeing things. There was something going on.

She ran inside, leaving the door open in her haste, through the pounding music and to the place by the door where she had left her bag. She pulled her phone out of the outermost pocket, ran back across the apartment, dodging dancers as she went, then out the door and onto the balcony again. Then she started up the phone and opened google. "Berlin news" she typed into the search bar, then hit search. While that was loading, she switched to a new tab and typed in "meteor activity recent?" then search again. A fourth orange streak flew across the sky and vanished behind one of the downtown buildings. They were all coming down in the same area, she realized. Not just all within the city limits, but all of them looked like they were coming down within a two-block radius. She frowned. No meteor shower was that consistent. She switched back to the "Berlin news" tab. The first few results were to do with sports, followed by one about a worker's union strike from two months before. She refreshed the tab. And refreshed again. And again. Frustrated, she put the phone down on the railing and glared at it.

"Hey, so what was it you were saying about 'lipid bilayers'? I mean that sounds like as good a place to start as... um..." Lily had come back onto the balcony, now carrying a glass of cheap red wine in each hand. "Hey, did you have a fight with your phone since I left?"

Vahlen turned toward the younger woman with an intensity that made Lily take a couple steps back. "Look," Vahlen said, pointing toward the skyline. "Just watch! Tell me you see it too!" Lily seemed confused, but she didn't argue. She turned out toward the skyline in the distance and watched it quietly. Vahlen, meanwhile, picked the phone back up and went back to furiously hammering the 'refresh' button.

Thirty seconds later, no new orange lights had fallen. Lily's voice made it clear that she was suddenly doubting Vahlen's sanity. "So, um, what am I supposed to be looking f- oh, holy crap!" Vahlen looked up just in time to see the latest light vanish behind the skyline. "What is that?" Lily asked.

"I'm not quite sure," Vahlen replied. "But the public is finally reacting to it, whatever it is. Come take a look at this." Lily placed the two forgotten glasses on the railing and crossed the balcony to look at the phone in Vahlen's hand.

On the screen was a picture of a strange, black-and-green block of what appeared to be metal, sitting in the middle of a small crater of cracked asphalt. The green markings were arranged in concentric circles on what appeared to be the top of the object, and the lumps and markings on the sides of it were far too symmetrical to be a natural formation. Underneath it was a caption in German which read _Fell out of the sky and crashed into the street in Central Berlin. Can anyone tell me what it is?_ "What is it, some kind of meteor?" Lily asked. Vahlen was silent. She was scrolling through related posts, searching for more about the objects. One had apparently crushed a car. All of them were hitting the street, with none impacting on rooftops. What was more, each of them was almost exactly one block away from the closest other alien objects in any direction, forming a grid, with one landing at each street corner.

"Moira? Do you know what this is?" Lily seemed to be getting more and more anxious the more she read. Vahlen said nothing and instead refreshed the page one last time. This time around the related posts showed green mist spraying from the strange objects. There were human shapes in that cloud, clearly being coated in the substance. One even seemed to be trying to escape and was being dragged back toward the center of the cloud where the object was still just barely visible.

"God..." Lily muttered, looking over Vahlen's shoulder. "Oh god oh god..." Vahlen set her jaw and breathed deep. Then, with a level of calm she wouldn't have expected of herself, she closed the browser and opened the phone app. She had hoped never to use this number, but she supposed that now she had no choice.


	2. Landfall Part 2

_X-Com was never seriously considered a priority by any of the nations of the world. It was, in the eyes of every founding nation, simply a PR stunt to convince the public that Earth was ready to resist an alien invasion. Not even the Council had ever considered the idea that they might have to actually use X-Com for its stated purpose. After all, what was the chance that something as ridiculous as an alien invasion would ever occur?_

 _But they had been pressured by the citizens of their respective countries, and so they had to at least give the appearance of readiness. And, they decided, they may as well use the project to advance their military technology. So they had given the engineering_ _team_ _the money they had needed to build their subterranean bunker in the northern Sahara, construct the Skyranger and a couple of their so-called_ _"hypervelocity interceptors," and even begin development on some more_ _advanced weapon systems. It had worked out just fine, but there didn't seem to be any use for these new inventions in traditional warfare. Their aircraft were so focused on speed that they would be almost useless in an actual war zone: the Skyranger, after all, may have been able to travel at Mach 5, but it could only hold four. What use was it to deploy a squad to the battlefield if the unit was only made up of four soldiers? The Council became restless, and with the public satisfied that something was being done about potential alien threats, their attention turned elsewhere, leaving nothing to stop the Council from cutting the project's budget. They kept sending just enough money to keep the lights on at the base, and otherwise the world completely forgot about the project and left it and its technology to gather dust._

 _That had been eight years ago._

* * *

Central Officer Bradford entered the operations room to find it in chaos.

Three steps down from the main doors of the operations room was the main floor, an open space with rows upon rows of desks and computers for overseeing operations. It was intended to be able to direct air, sea, and land combat ops, with precise monitoring of up to twelve operations at a time. Above this was a vast, empty space, a natural cavern ten stories tall, walled in rock and criss-crossed by catwalks that extended from the balconies that lined the walls. All this was centered around a bank of six screens mounted in a ring around a central pillar, each screen pointing in a different direction so that the information displayed on them could be seen from anywhere in the room. It was usually fairly quiet in here. Ever since Bradford had arrived three years ago, he had never seen more than ten people on the main floor at any one time.

Now it seemed the whole staff of the base was there. The main bank of screens at the center of the room was showing nothing but static. Half a dozen IT personnel were gathered around the screens and trying desperately to make them work correctly. Around them, forty officers of various ranks hurried back and forth, talking among themselves and forming a low roar that resounded in the large hollow space. Several more people were coming and going through the doors to the rest of the base, and several junior officers stood, bleary-eyed and confused, on the floor of the Ops Room. Not surprising, Bradford thought. It was two in the morning. Most of the base personnel had been asleep until the alarm had gone off. Far above, scientists, soldiers and technicians ran at breakneck pace along the catwalks, heading to and from labs, barracks, hangars, and workshops. Those catwalks were the hub of the subterranean base, and the rest of it radiated outward from this room like spokes on a wheel.

With all the confusion in the room, it took a few seconds before anyone noticed that Bradford had come in through the main doors. Finally, a shout rang out from somewhere in the crowd below him. "Atten-TION!" Immediately, movement and noise stopped, and every soldier and officer in the room snapped upright and turned towards him. Bradford let them stand for a moment, ensuring that the last echoes died out before he said "Lieutenant Bashara; report." The officer of the watch, a short, brown-skinned woman in a hijab-style uniform, brought up her hand in salute. "Sir, one unidentified flying object has been detected in continuous suborbital flight above Europe, altitude 260 to 270 kilometers and moving in what appears to be a circular flight pattern. Radar contact is too large to be any known spacecraft; approximate size is estimated at between 120 and 200 meters across. Multiple projectiles have been launched toward the Earth, landing in three major cities: Liverpool, Berlin, and Marseille. No mistake, sir. We're at Rio 10."

Bradford winced. The Rio scale was intended to assess the magnitude of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Rio 10 was as high as the scale went, and it was reserved for direct contact with an undeniably alien intelligence within the solar system. There was a part of Bradford that still didn't believe it. It had to be a trick. A joke. Or a secret project from some nation or other. Surely it couldn't really be aliens!

But Bradford was a military man, and even as his mind scrambled for other options, his training drove him forward. "As you were," he said, loud and clear, and the activity in the room resumed, though now at a considerably lower volume. "Lieutenant. Walk with me." Bashara nodded and fell into step beside him as he stepped down the three steps to the main floor of the ops room and began to navigate toward his command station. "Do we have any hint of the aliens' intentions?" he asked. The book required him to ask certain questions before anything else. Bashara, following half a step behind him, replied "No, nothing yet. They're launching projectiles into some cities, but we aren't certain why yet. Reports are still coming in, and the projectiles don't seem to really be doing anything. We have no operatives on the ground, so intel is still coming in." "But they could be hostile?" "Yes, sir." Bradford couldn't think of a response to that, so instead he decided to move on to the next question in the list. "Are all forces in the base mobilized?" "Yes, sir. Interceptors and Skyranger are both fully fueled, and alpha squad is being briefed and recalled to base as we speak." Bashara sidestepped to avoid a technician dashing in the opposite direction, then moved back to her position beside Bradford. "Honestly, though, sir," she said, her voice losing a bit of its professional edge, "the soldiers, the pilots... they're really nervous. Everyone is." Bradford could relate. In fact, he was terrified by what might be about to happen. But he knew he had to put on a brave face for the team, so he turned to face Bashara fully and managed to put on a small smile. "Just do your job and we'll all be fine. Keep me updated." He almost reached out to touch her shoulder, but his training intervened. Instead, he drew himself up to his full height (over a foot taller than Bashara) and gave her a sharp nod. "As you were, lieutenant." She snapped off another quick salute, then turned and rushed off across the ops room, her white headscarf making her easy to pick out even after she had rejoined the crowd.

Bradford, meanwhile, had other things to deal with. He turned away, took a long, deep breath, and addressed one of the dozen other people hanging around nearby and waiting for his attention. This was going to be a long shift.

* * *

 _AN: The operations room I describe in this chapter is a much lower-budget version of the one we see in the game. Don't worry, though. They'll get their fancy holographic globe soon enough._


	3. Landfall Part 3

_"No, the Sahara base wasn't a place for the best and brightest. Back then, the idea of an alien invasion seemed downright ridiculous, and being assigned there was essentially a dead end for your career. It was just a place for people whose countries wanted them to disappear. Many of us couldn't even go back home for fear of what our governments might do to us. So we lived elsewhere, either at the base itself or scattered across the world."_

* * *

When Yasmeen Abulrashid she had been awoken late last night by the phone, she had been irritated. When she saw that it was X-Com that was calling her, she had been angry. She had been entirely ready to pick up and chew out whoever was on the other end of the line for their apparent lack of understanding of time zones. But then, as she pressed the receive button and a young man's voice edged with barely-restrained with panic came through the phone, her anger had died down, replaced with a hard determination.

She had finished the conversation using short but civil responses, and when the operator told her she would be taking a public plane from Simón Bolívar airport in the morning, she had simply acknowledged, said a quick goodbye, and then had quietly, calmly, gone about the task of getting dressed and packing her meager belongings into her old, beat-up suitcase.

When Yasmeen had fled from Libya four years ago, she had left with nothing but a gun, a few refugees, and a truck loaded with water and spare gasoline. X-Com paid her well enough, but what with the cost of living in Caracas, even in such a small, run-down apartment, she still couldn't afford much else. And with the recent protests, plus her constant flights to Algeria and back, living here just kept getting harder...

She had done a final check of her room for anything she might have missed, picked up her hijab headscarf from the side table, then put it back down. She rarely wore it anyway, and never when she was at Sahara Base. Maybe once this was all over she'd buy a new one. Or not. She'd decide when that happened.

She adjusted her uniform where it sat on top of the clothes in her half-full suitcase, then closed it and did up the zipper. She had looked around one last time, taking in the peeling beige wallpaper, the threadbare carpet by the door, the tiny, dirty window with the broken shutters that her landlord kept insisting he would repair eventually. She said a silent goodbye to her home of the last four years. And, with that, she had picked up the suitcase, took down the small box containing her pistol from the shelf beside the door, and had walked out of the apartment without another glance back.

All that had been last night. Now she was sitting on an overstuffed couch that smelled of cigarette smoke in an otherwise-empty lounge at the airport, watching the near-constant coverage of the situation in Europe that seemed to be playing on all three of the televisions in the room. Despite having spent the last four years learning Spanish, Yasmeen still felt more comfortable with English, so she was focusing mainly on the one TV that was showing an English language channel.

 _"At around two o'clock this morning, these bizarre objects fell from the sky, landing at every intersection in the Berlin city center."_ On the screen was a helicopter shot of the streets of Berlin, showing the now distressingly familiar image of the alien artifacts. _"As you can see here, each of them has sprayed some sort of green substance over the street surrounding it. This appears to be some sort of weapon system, and possibly as many as a hundred of thousand people have been trapped in the goo. However, it seems these people are still alive. Rescue efforts are underway, but progress has been slow due to the difficulty in removing the material, and the sheer number of people who have been affected by the attack."_ The screen now showed a shot of three emergency response workers trying to cut someone free from a lump of hardened green tendrils. A man in a firefighter's uniform was using a pair of hydraulic shears to cut through the substance, but it was painfully slow, and in that one shot alone dozens of other trapped people were visible. In the background, a thick green-tinted mist was slowly rising off of the squat, lumpy black device.

Yasmeen looked up when the lounge door opened, then got to her feet with a tired smile. "Renaldo! Good to see you! I didn't know you were back in Venezuela!" she said in accented but intelligible Spanish. The stocky, tan, bearded man standing in the doorway smiled in return. He was about the same height as her, a bit short for a man, but then again she was a bit tall for a woman. And that was where the similarities stopped. He was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested where she was slender. His features were round where hers were sharp. His skin was much lighter than hers, as were his eyes: sea blue compared to her dark brown. And of course, there was his beard, which, he had told her in the past while very drunk, he wore mostly to cover up his weak chin. Yasmeen's jawline, meanwhile, was sharp and defined, completing her carved-in-stone appearance.

"Yasmeen. It's been too long," he said. He was pulling a large wheeled suitcase behind him and carried a stuffed duffel bag in his other hand. Renaldo came closer to her, letting the door swing shut behind him, and looked her up and down, his grin fading somewhat. "You don't look good."

"Gee, thanks," Yasmeen said, glaring at him.

His smile returned at that. "No, I mean you look exhausted. How long have you been here?"

The corners of her mouth tightened in embarrassment. "Uh, well..." He looked at her knowingly. "Um... all night. Or nearly, anyway. Pretty much since I got the call."

Renaldo nodded, then took a seat on the couch. "That's about what I figured. So, what have you been doing?"

"Worrying," she admitted, sitting back down next to him. "Well, not exactly," she amended quickly, "More like... thinking. About what all this means." She gestured to the television, which was now showing a reporter on the site, talking about the mist that had been slowly rising off the objects ever since they had opened.

"Mmm-hmm. And what have you come up with during your..." he pulled back the sleeve of his blue button-up shirt to check the gold-banded watch on his wrist. "...eight and a half hours of vigil?"

She sighed. "Well, it's really hard to say. Anything could happen. This is our first ever contact. We're flying blind, and our first contact's not only Rio 10, but it's with an actively hostile alien force."

Renaldo looked back and forth between her and the screen with a smirk. "Well, we don't know that. This might just be their way of saying hello." Yasmeen gave him a strange sidelong look, and he burst out laughing. "That was a joke, Yasmeen. Let it go."

She sighed, and glared at the screen, no longer even registering what it was showing. She continued talking, her voice flat but with a hard edge to it. "We don't know anything about them. I've been sitting here for eight hours, and no new information has come in. We know that they have a big ship in orbit and that they're throwing these weird goo-and-fog canisters at our cities. And that's it. We don't know why they're here, or where they come from, or what they want, or what they're capable of, or why they're attacking us... we don't know anything!" She settled back on the couch and slumped back against the cushions so that she was staring up at the ceiling. "One thing that's for certain, though, is that they're certainly capable of interstellar travel. That means that they're definitely more advanced than us. And we- we personally, you and me- are going to have to fight against them." She rolled her head over to face him, still leaned back against the cushions. "So... how was your night?"

Renaldo gave a little laugh and replied "Oh, about the same. It's just that I did my worrying- thinking, pondering, whatever- in my own house instead of on a... really uncomfortably squishy couch at a noisy airport. Why did you come here, exactly?"

She groaned. "It seemed like the thing to do. Like, if I was in a movie, I would get the phone call and immediately head to the airport. You know?" She let out a snort and broke into a fit of self-mocking laughter. "Oh, I watch way too many bad TV dramas. Curse you, Renaldo, for introducing me to telenovelas!"

He grinned and shrugged. "Hey, you didn't need to keep watching them." She stopped laughing with difficulty and looked at him with a small smirk on her lips. It looked somehow out of place like it was something she didn't have a lot of practice with, but it was genuine, and it helped to soften her usually sharp features. Renaldo looked back at her for a long moment, smiling warmly, then cleared his throat and broke eye contact. "Tell you what," he said, picking up his duffel bag off the floor beside him and unzipping it, "I just bought a bottle of blackberry brandy from one of the airport shops. I was planning on saving it for some time at Sahara base. You know how bad the selection is at the staff bar there. But maybe we could open it now. You seem like you could use a drink." He looked up at her questioningly, and she nodded, shifting to become more comfortable on the couch. "Great," he said, and pulled out a tall glass bottle of black liquid. "I have glasses in my suitcase. Just give me a second."

Once he had found the two small glasses hiding in a corner of the suitcase, and the two of them each had poured themselves a glass, he carefully screwed the lid back onto the bottle and turned to face her again. She sloshed the liquid about in a circle, then raised it toward him with a smile. "To strike team alpha!" she said, and he smiled and clinked his glass against hers. "May we all survive the coming time of turmoil," she added.

Both of them drank deeply. Renaldo drained a quarter of his glass in the first go, then watched with slowly building amusement as Yasmeen drank half of hers before finally lowering the glass, a small blush coming to her cheeks. "Mmm." She licked her lips and looked down at the glass appreciatively. "Nice choice."

"I hoped you'd like it." After a moment's pause, he quickly added "Well, you and the rest of the team, of course. We should save some for them. So, ah, what time did they say the flight was again?"

* * *

The flight, as it turned out, left at 7:36, which the two of them found out just after finishing their drinks at 7:34. On top of that, it had changed gates. This meant by the time that they found out when the departure was, the two soldiers had exactly two minutes to fun from one end of the airport to the other. It was a distance of nearly 800 meters. They both did it in just under a minute and a half, leaving them with just enough time to have their tickets checked and get aboard before the gate closed.

Yasmeen had been surprised when she was told that she would be flying first class. She had been back and forth to Sahara base a dozen times over the past four years, but she had always been on the other side of the curtain. So she felt distinctly uncomfortable as she settled into her cushy seat and took stock of the comparatively luxurious cabin. It was mostly empty. More than half the first class seats were unoccupied, which struck her as a bit strange. This was a major overseas flight. Usually by the time she walked through the first class cabin every seat was already full.

She was sitting next to the window on the left side of the plane. Across the aisle from her, Renaldo took his own seat, still breathing heavily. "How are you doing there?" she whispered to him with a smirk as the flight attendant began her speech. "Not shirking on your training, are you?"

He grimaced, and whispered back "Hey, I made it here first, you know." She continued to stare at him, and eventually, he said "No, I'm not shirking. I'm staying in shape. Jeez."

"Good. I have a feeling we'll be needing you in your top shape pretty soon," she said, a slight frown making its way onto her face."Only if these aliens land infantry," he replied, then continued with a broad grin on his face. "Who knows? Maybe we'll both just wait out the war inside Sahara Base, hanging out with the other troops and scientists... You know. Like a summer camp."

"Only if these aliens land infantry," he replied, then continued with a broad grin on his face. "Who knows? Maybe we'll both just wait out the war inside Sahara Base, hanging out with the other troops and scientists... You know. Like a summer camp."

"I never went to summer camp."

"Right. Civil unrest. Poverty. War."

"Plus they just sound like a terrible experience."

He chuckled. "Well, I can't argue with you there. But they're a hell of a lot better than a war, right?"

She shrugged. "At least wars are simple. When you're on the ground, it's really just a matter of shoot and survive, right? No hormones or... I dunno, personal drama to get involved with."

"I guess." Renaldo's smile slipped a bit, and he turned to listen to the attendant explaining how the emergency exits worked, just as the plane began to pull away from the gate. "Hey, do you feel the tension in the air?" he asked, leaning back towards Yasmeen after a moment.

"...No?"

"Yeah, usually there's more noise up here. This is... weirdly silent." "I'll take your word for it." She frowned, then added "It makes sense, though, right? There's an alien spaceship up in the sky over Europe, and we're about to be flying towards it. That explains all the empty seats. I bet a lot of people canceled this morning when they heard."

"Are you nervous?"

"A little," she admitted. "But no more nervous than I was when I fled Libya to join X-Com. I'm really just worried that I won't be able to sleep on the plane. I really should have gotten some more rest last night, and I've never been able to sleep when I take coach."

Renaldo's smile widened. "Well, this isn't coach, is it? Just close your eyes. I'll wake you when we get there."

Yasmeen slept like a baby all the way across the Atlantic.

* * *

 _AN: Hey, everyone, Thalgrond here._

 _So, this chapter took a kind of ridiculously long time to get around to, and I'm sorry for taking so long. I'll try to get the next one finished and posted in a more reasonable time frame. In fact, I've already got the outline for it written out, so it shouldn't take very long at all. Then again, it was all the dialogue that made this one take so long, so... hmm..._

 _Anyway, I figure it's about time that I tell you what the structure is going to be for this fanfic. The story is essentially going to be split into seasons, or 'arcs' as I prefer to call them. Arc One (Landfall) will be five chapters long when it's completed, and will cover everything leading up to and including the first mission. Then we'll see where it goes after that._


	4. Landfall Part 4

_"Did we like the commander at first? No. In fact, not everyone even respected him. We were so used to working under Bradford that we... well, to be honest, most of us kind of hated Commander Adams from day one. Of course, we all know how that turned out."_

* * *

Henry Hunter stood, arms folded, in the parking lot of Noumérat-Moufdi Zakaria Airport, impatiently watching the door of the tiny terminal. He was half-sitting, half-leaning against the trunk of a black SUV, one of a cluster of three identical SUVs that took up an otherwise empty corner of the parking lot. The dozen or so other cars that were scattered around the rest of the lot were a mixture of pickup trucks, small rusty cars, a few vans and buses offering shuttle service, and an old taxi that looked like it was just a single speed bump away from falling to pieces. A bicycle rack next to the terminal door was completely full, and a few extra bikes had been chained to a nearby fence when their owners couldn't find room. All around the edges of the lot were the drivers of the vans and buses. On most days they would have been calling out constantly, crying the superiority of their vehicles, their destinations, and their own skill at driving. Today, though, it seemed much more relaxed. Rather than the usual steady flow of passengers coming and going, today it was more of a trickle. Most people had suddenly decided last night that flying was a bad idea, and the shuttle pilots were left to talk among themselves. Of course, they were talking about the aliens. Everybody was today.

Henry was a white man in his mid-thirties of average height and build, but his muscles were toned and looked as strong as steel cords. This combined with regulation buzzcut hair and his outfit of a black tank top with a pair of desert camo pants, and the matching camo jacket that was draped across the roof of the SUV behind him, he looked like the perfect stereotypical off-duty US marine. Which wasn't entirely accurate. He hadn't been a member of the marines in five years.

He wiped his forehead and shifted uncomfortably, his tank top pulling away from his skin with an audible sound, and sweat began to run down his back in rivulets. He didn't mind. Despite being born in the US, he had long since gotten used to the central Algerian climate. His discomfort was mostly due to a rising feeling of worry. _Where were they?_ He had seen the plane land almost twenty minutes ago. Why weren't they out yet? He was actually starting to worry, but he forced himself to stay calm. They were X-com agents. Nobody was going to detain them, especially not now. The door swung open, accompanied by a chorus of shouts and whistles from the shuttle drivers trying to get more passengers before they left. Henry squinted against the bright sunlight, shielding his eyes with his hand, and grimaced as the doors came into sharper focus. It wasn't them. A caramel-skinned, bearded old man made his way toward one of the buses, not even so much as glancing in the direction of the parked SUV caravan. He grunted with disgust, pulled his jacket off the roof of the SUV, and strode around the side of the car to the open passenger's side door.

A younger Arab man was sitting in the car on the driver's side, doing something with his phone. He looked up as Henry slid into the passenger's seat beside him. "Are they out yet?" he asked in slightly accented English, clicking the power button on his phone and adjusting the rear view mirror to give him a better look at the parking lot. "No," Henry replied, shutting the door and trying to make himself comfortable in the baking hot seat. "Not sure why. I'm thinking maybe I should go in and see what's going on with them. I know that was their plane that landed a while back, so they're definitely in the terminal." "So why don't you?" Henry shrugged, then turned to the driver with a wry smile. "Because I'm lazy." "Oh, you are that, mister Hunter. I'll not argue with you on that point." Henry laughed, a deep, hearty sound. It wasn't that funny, but when Henry laughed he always committed to it, and he was easily amused. "So, Farid. How's it feel to be about to see your sister again?" Farid's smile faltered but came back almost immediately. "Well, I must say, it's not how I expected it to happen. I haven't seen her since she left Libya. The dust finally settled and I heard she was working for X-com. The newest conflict starts heating up, I get a job here too, hoping to surprise her next time she comes on duty, and as soon as I do... aliens!" Henry nodded, brow furrowing in understanding. "I hear ya, man. This is rough for everyone. I mean, did you see Bradford when you picked me up? The commander arrived earlier this morning, and Bradford's been stressing out about it ever since. Trying to convince the guy that we're not _totally_ unprepared-" "Which, of course, you are." "Fair enough. But our CO doesn't need to know that. He's a stuck-up perfectionist if ever I saw one, and based on what I've heard, he's likely to issue punishments for any shortcoming he might see." "Hmm. Hardass, huh?" "Yeah, that's why he got assigned here." Farid's eyebrow rose, and Henry explained. "He got given the job four years ago, and the rumor around the base is that he only got it was because he was too eager to hand out discipline in his unit. Guy was too strict for the US marines. I can tell you from experience, that's a high bar to clear. But apparently, some of his troops were even reported as having unexplained injuries." Farid still looked confused. "Why did they send him here, then?" he asked. "Well, same reason most of us are here. They didn't want to deal with him anymore. They wanted to get rid of him, but they couldn't come up with a good enough reason to discharge him. So they promoted him, made him the CO of Sahara Base. Now we all have to deal with him instead."

Farid reached up to adjust the mirror again and squinted at it for a moment. "Hey, I think that's her!" he exclaimed suddenly and clapped his hands in excitement. "Mister Hunter, go check and make sure! I will stay here, save the surprise for her." Henry smiled, then opened the door of the SUV and stepped out, blinking as his eyes tried to adjust to the light again. "Hey, Farid, mind if I borrow your sunglasses?" "Oh, certainly! They're here somewhere..." There was the sound of the glove compartment opening, and Farid rummaging around in its contents, then he said "Here you go!" and his hand emerged from the shadows inside the car holding a pair of aviators. Henry took them with a smile, closed the door behind him, and set off across the parking lot towards the door of the terminal, putting on the sunglasses as he went.

* * *

Yasmeen rubbed her eyes as she exited the small terminal and looked around, shielding her eyes and listening to the usual chorus of calls and whistles. Renaldo stepped outside a few moments later and stood blinking in the sunlight beside her.

"Ah, Zakaria Airport!" He hoisted his duffel bag and sighed. "God did I ever not miss this place. And the increased security... definitely not improving my thoughts of the place. Twenty minutes, Yasmeen. Twenty minutes!" Yasmeen nodded in agreement but could think of no further response. Instead, she gestured towards the black SUVs tucked into a corner of the parking lot. "Shall we?" "We shall!" he replied, with a wide smile. "I wonder who's coming to pick us up this time."

They started across the parking lot, the heat and light reflected off the asphalt making Yasmeen squint. She saw someone get out of one of the cars and, after pausing for a few moments, start moving towards them, but it wasn't until he was only a couple dozen steps away from her that she could tell who it was. When she did, though, she broke into a smile and, hefting her light, half-packed suitcase, she picked up her pace toward him, calling out "Alphas!" Henry responded by throwing his head back and letting loose a very convincing wolf's howl. Yasmeen joined in on it, and as the three of them came to a halt a few paces apart, Renaldo shrugged, threw his own head back, and added his voice to the sound. The three kept the howl up for a good ten seconds before Renaldo broke out laughing, and Henry soon joined in, his deep bark overpowering Renaldo's chuckles. Yasmeen didn't laugh, but she did smile, broad and genuine, and put her arms around the other two, her left arm around Renaldo's shoulders, her right around Henry's back. "Let's go give 'em hell!" she said, imitating Henry's midwestern accent, and the three of them set off towards the trio of SUVs waiting in the corner of the parking lot.

As the trio approached the cars, Yasmeen felt Henry tugging on her arm, guiding them towards the one at the end. She didn't think much of it, and followed along, pulling Renaldo in turn. It wasn't until the rear door of the SUV slid open that she realized he had brought her to this one on purpose.

"Hello, Yasmeen!" came an exuberant shout in Arabic as the door slid open. She recognized the voice, but it had been so long she didn't really remember. Something tugged on a memory at the back of her mind... "F-Farid?" "Yes, sister! The Abulrashid family is back together! And just in time for the end of the world!" Yasmeen was floored. She struggled for words, having trouble slipping back into her native language, and could only come up with "H-how-? What... are you... Why are you driving the-" Farid cut her off. "I got the job before _they_ arrived," he pointed upwards, a menacing tone in his voice, "but not by much. I've only had the job for a couple of weeks. I wanted to surprise you!" She blinked a few times, then admitted, "Well, you certainly did that!" "Good to hear it! I would have hated to drive into the apocalypse for nothing!" Still grinning, he put the key in the ignition, turned it, and began backing away. "So, what are the other two cars for?" Yasmeen asked out of curiosity. "Oh, you two are not the first to land here today, and you will not be the last! Far from it, sister. We have been having people flying in from all over the world for the last twelve hours. We've almost got everyone now, though. Apparently, we're still waiting for some people in Bravo Squad who were on duty in Iraq, and had trouble getting away... oh, and I keep hearing about this scientist from Germany. She's still not here, and mister Bradford is becoming very riled up about it!"

* * *

Vahlen bounced up and down impatiently in the driver's seat, drumming on the steering wheel and mentally urging the car in front of her to just _move already!_ She had been told to get out of the city and she would be picked up by an X-com plane. The first part was proving to be rather more difficult than she had at first imagined.

Every street was blocked by the evacuation. She had spent the entire night sitting in her car with a cheap coffee in her hand, sipping it occasionally to stay awake, and moving along the street at the speed of a hung-over snail (or at least that was how Lily had put it before she had fallen asleep a couple hours before.)

Ah, yes. Lily. In fact, Vahlen's tiny car was packed to bursting with unconscious bachelorette party guests, along with the car that was immediately behind her. Hanna, the bride herself, was asleep in Vahlen's back seat, leaning her head on the arm of Ilize, one of the bridesmaids. Hanna had passed out after a panicked, two-hour-long exchange between her and her fiance over the phone, which only ended when the phone went abruptly dead due to too cell tower saturation. She had fallen asleep from exhaustion and alcohol from the night before after a dozen attempts to call him back, and one final text to tell him she was okay just before she got too tired to keep her eyes open any longer.

And now the sun was coming up, cresting over the skyline of Berlin behind them. Just perfect. She'd been up all night with not a wink.

Vahlen looked in the mirror to get a look at the city behind her and immediately did a double take. Last time she had looked, Berlin looked terrible. The glow of fire illuminated the sides of buildings, the flames set by a combination of the reentry heat of the pods and the rioting and panic that had followed shortly afterward. Now, though, she couldn't see those fires. In fact, she could barely see the city itself. The whole thing was... hazy. Like it was hidden in a cloud of smoke or a thin bank of fog. Vahlen looked out the window, back and forth along the highway, then opened the driver's side door to step out and get a better look.

There was no mistaking it. The city was almost invisible, concealed by the slowly rising mist. But there was something more. Sunlight was filtering through that mist from the other side. It came out tinted green, casting an unsettling stark illumination across the landscape. Vahlen frowned. It had to be those pods. They were letting out fog, right? But why? And how did they hold so much of it? And why hadn't the cloud developed before? That was when she felt it. Or rather, didn't feel it. Last night, when she had stood on the balcony outside Hanna's apartment, there had been a cool night breeze blowing. That breeze had stopped. Now it was still. Silent. Or almost, she corrected herself. There still was a slight breeze. And it came from the direction of the city center.

Vahlen watched with grim fascination as the fog bank slowly spread out across the city. And she watched with growing apprehension as, with silent menace, it rolled slowly across the landscape towards her.

* * *

 _AN: We're almost done with the first arc. Next time: the Alphas go on their first combat mission of the Ethereal invasion! Be worried. Be very, very worried._


	5. Landfall Part 5

The briefing room had been built to accommodate as many as eight hundred troops in its rows of seats. It was an auditorium much like a college lecture hall, if a lecture hall was upsized, moved a hundred meters underground, constructed by a team of perfectionist military engineers with an unlimited budget, and was intended to be able to sustain repeated direct hits from a howitzer. The acoustics were absolute perfection, with the whole room shaped in just such a way as to ensure that a person at the podium could be heard clearly and without echo from any of the eight hundred seats. Outside that thin shell of acoustic paneling, it was encased on all sides in enough steel armor plating, lead insulation, and poured cement to give most nuclear bunkers a run for their money. On the left side of the room was a door that led to the barracks. On the right side was another that led out to the armory and, beyond that, the hangar bay, such that a squad could be rushed straight from the barracks to the Skyranger in under two minutes if necessary. It was an engineering and logistical marvel, just as much as the rest of the base.

The briefing room currently held a grand total of nineteen people. At the front of the room, Bradford and Shen both stood a few paces behind the Commander, a broad-shouldered, gray-haired white man with a strong jaw. The Commander was still in his US general's uniform, having simply not, apparently, had the time to change into the proper X-com outfit since arrival at Sahara Base some nine hours previously, or on the ten-hour flight to get him there. On his other side was Lieutenant Bashara, the small, middle-eastern woman with a green headscarf to match her uniform.

The other fifteen people were soldiers, sitting in the rows of chairs in clusters of three or four with large gaps between them. Yasmeen and the other two Alphas sat at the front. Yasmeen and Henry were in the very first row, Yasmeen sitting straight and staring intently at the people at the front of the room, and Henry slightly slumped in his seat, fiddling with the small crucifix around his neck. Renaldo, meanwhile, was sitting one row behind them, in a position that meant that when he leaned down he could put his head right between them and whisper to both at the same time. Further back, Bravo and Charlie squads were sitting in a big clump. Unlike the Alphas, both of them were at full strength, totaling eight soldiers between the two of them. Finally, Delta squad was scattered all over the auditorium, its four soldiers each sitting on their own.

Renaldo shifted in his seat, then leaned forward for the fourth time in as many minutes. "We're still under strength," he commented.

"Yeah, of course. We can all see the size of the room," Henry replied.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

Yasmeen nodded in agreement, though she never took her eyes off the front of the room. The Alphas had been one short ever since their fourth member, Vasylyna, had been recalled to the Ukraine three months previously once her political enemies had been voted out of office. Now that X-com had a use, she would probably be coming back to the project soon, but until then it looked like the Alphas were grounded. The regulations were clear: the Skyranger never flew with anything less than the full complement of two pilots and four soldiers.

There was the sound of somebody tapping on a microphone, and the quiet chatter filling the room quickly lapsed into silence as everyone turned to face the podium and the commander behind it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said as soon as it looked like he had everyone's attention, "I'll start by stating the obvious: as of today, we are at war. But this is a war unlike any that we as a species have ever faced: one where the enemy is not only completely unknown but also so superior to us in technology as to quite possibly be _unknowable_." He paused and reached down to adjust a paper behind the podium. "But it is in our nature as humans to resist. When the first explorers arrived on the shores of the Americas, they had such a technological advantage over the natives that it was almost never an issue for them to destroy them. And yet the fighting spirit of those native peoples was so strong that the Europeans, the _superior force_ , came to fear them utterly. _That_ is our goal here. We will make them so terrified of us that when that ship of theirs goes home, it will bring back horror stories about us that will make any future attackers think twice before they set Earth as their destination."

He took a deep breath and looked around the auditorium at the few soldiers scattered around. They were all looking at him with rapt attention. Good. That speech had had its desired effect. He reminded himself to thank Bradford later. "Now," he said, moving the cue cards to the side and leaning forward over the podium. "On to our first mission. There's a scientist in Berlin, a woman by the name of Moira Vahlen. Seven hours ago, we received a call from Vahlen to inform us of the situation in Germany, and to request assistance. We sent her a plane ticket and instructions to catch a flight from Berlin Schoenfeld Airport, just before phone traffic got so intense that we lost contact with her. Unfortunately, that plane arrived at Boudiaf International in Northern Algeria about forty minutes ago. Doctor Vahlen was not on it." He glanced down at a document on his podium, a summary of Vahlen's career. "She's a remarkably talented scientist, and we need her on the team. The Council convened earlier today, and has instructed us to perform a rescue operation and extract Vahlen from the city."

Bradford took a step forward, and without a word, he and the Commander switched places. "Alright," said the officer, coming to a standstill and placing both hands on the podium. "Alpha Squad, consisting of Hunter, Garcia, Abulrashid. You're going out on the Skyranger, just like we had always planned." Yasmeen's expression turned to one of absolute astonishment. "I know," Bradford continued quickly, "You're one member short. Rest assured that we will do our best to ensure that Private Kostyshyn will return to X-com as soon as we can contact her. But for now, we still have need of your skills. So, for this mission, you will be joined by private Jackson from Beta Squad."

There was a series of quiet sounds from all around the room. Henry turned to look back towards the cluster of soldiers higher up in the rows of seats, and made a quiet noise of disgust. Renaldo leaned forward to try to get Yasmeen's attention, tapping her on the shoulder and whispering her name. Yasmeen, though, was still staring in shock at Bradford. Finally, just as Renaldo's tapping grew more insistent, and Bradford looked like he was about to start talking again, she stood up and said, loudly and clearly, "No."

Bradford looked at her with a mild expression. "No?"

"No!" she said again. "No, the Alphas are a cohesive team! So are the Betas! You have to send one or the other, you can't just mix and match! We've never even trained with Jackson! We can't-"

The Commander stepped forward and interrupted her. "This is insubordination, captain!" "But you're going to get us-" "Sit! Down!"

His voice resounded in the chamber, the perfect acoustics lending his already powerful voice an even greater force. Yasmeen looked pleadingly at Bradford. He looked back with that same distant, mild expression. After another moment, she ground her teeth and took her seat again.

The commander stepped back again, returning to his place behind Bradford. Yasmeen, though, remained focused on Bradford himself. She had known him for years, and he had always drilled into them the importance of unit cohesiveness. This was the most important moment of any of their careers, and he had just decided to abandon that?

Bradford cleared his throat and continued talking, but this time it was directly to Yasmeen. "You four are the best individual fighters that this base has to offer. We don't know what you'll be facing out there, and if we encounter any resistance, the commander and I agree that it would be best to have the most highly skilled team possible." Yasmeen grimaced in defeat. But then she noticed something. She squinted at his face, but he had already turned away. Had he just...?

"We still haven't made contact with Vahlen again. However, we are in contact with a German army platoon that is helping with rescue operations in Southern Berlin, the area where Vahlen is most likely to be. You will be meeting up with them, and continuing the search together. When you find Doctor Vahlen, you will load her onto the Skyranger and bring her home. Unfortunately, this means there will be five of you trying to get onto the return flight. One will have to stay in Berlin and return via a normal plane. I'll leave you four to decide who that will be." He glanced down at his watch, and said "Further briefing will be done via satellite uplink onboard the Skyranger. Good luck, everyone, and godspeed. Company: dismissed!"

People all over the auditorium began getting up and making for the exit on the left side of the room, back towards the barracks. Henry got up beside her, and walked past, saying something about 'going to check on Jackson.' Yasmeen, though, remained seated, staring at Bradford as he packed the papers on the podium back into a briefcase that his aide, Bashara, had brought forward. He had! He had given her an apologetic look! It had been brief, but...

 _It wasn't his idea,_ she realized. And then: _Damn. That commander is going to get all of us killed._

* * *

"Nervous, Jackson?!" asked Henry over the roar of the Skyranger's engines. "Not really!" Leon Jackson replied. The two were sitting on opposite sides of the cramped space inside the Skyranger, so close that their knees were touching. Leon, like Henry, was a white American, but that was where the similarities ended. He was a smaller man, younger too, dark haired and without the greying at the temples. His own voice was less powerful than Henry's, meaning he had to almost shout to be heard. "It's not a problem if you are, you know!" said Henry. "It's a scary situation! New enemies, unusual circumstances, an AO shrouded in some sort of weird, radar-blocking fog?! That's-" "Oh, put on your headphones, idiots!" interrupted Renaldo. Henry and Leon both picked up the headsets in their laps and placed them over their ears, immediately blocking out most of the noise from the engines.

"Henry, are you trying to scare him?" asked Renaldo "No, I'm just saying that fear can be a good thing. It keeps you alive on the ground." "Sure, but it's pointless here!" Renaldo said, turning his head to glare at him. "There's no reports of any hostiles in the AO. So stop hazing the new guy! It can wait until later, at least."

Henry was about to retort when a crackle in all of their headphones cut him off, followed by Bradford's voice. "Central to Alpha squad. Come in, Alpha squad. Over." Yasmeen, sitting across from Renaldo, tapped a button on the side of her own headset, and said "We read, Central, five by five. Over." "We have a development of the situation," Bradford continued. "Contact zero-two just went up on the board. We have another you-eff-oh, bearing down on Berlin fast. It's smaller than the primary contact, but it's using the same sort of stealth tech. We only spotted it when it hit the atmosphere. Over." "How long until it reaches the ground? Over." "At its present speed, it will be on the ground within a minute. And its flight path suggests that it does plan to land. Over." "What's our ETA? Over." "Seventeen minutes. One other thing, Abulrashid. Be advised, it looks like it's coming down right on your AO. Or at most a few blocks from it. Over." Yasmeen's expression didn't change a bit. She simply nodded and said "Acknowledged, Central. Alpha squad, out." Then she turned to Henry and said "Don't say anything, further Hunter. We all know what we're going into. We don't need you making us more nervous." This seemed ironic, considering how perfectly calm Yasmeen herself seemed to be, but Henry stayed quiet.

After another tense few seconds, Renaldo looked down at his watch. "Sixteen minutes on the clock," he said.

Everyone else checked their own watches. They all knew there would be no need of further updates. Each of them would be counting down the minutes on their own. The inside of the Skyranger was suddenly completely silent except for the roar of the engines vibrating through the fuselage.

* * *

"Check equipment."

"Acknowledged, Big Sky."

...

"Alpha squad, be advised, we have lost contact with the German platoon. Attempting to reacquire."

"Acknowledged, Central."

...

"ETA five minutes! Beginning deceleration!"

"Acknowledged, Big Sky."

...

"Alpha squad: German platoon is not responding. We cannot confirm their position."

"Acknowledged, Central."

...

...

...

The silence stretched out, making the fifteen minute flight feel a whole lot longer. Yasmeen checked her assault rifle more times than she could count: safety, trigger, reload mechanism, clip. Around her, she sometimes noticed everyone else doing the same. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. She had to appear calm and collected. That was how the squad knew her.

Except that now there was Jackson. He didn't know her at all! She ground her teeth, then forced herself to relax her jaw and take another deep breath. He was a good soldier. He was competent. She had seen him at the targeting range out in the desert near the base, and he was a good shot. Still, she couldn't wait for this op to be over and for Vasylyna to get back.

Finally, the call came. "ETA two minutes! Beginning final descent!"

"Acknowledged, Big Sky. Bring us in." She and the rest of the squad shifted forward in their seats, preparing to get up and exit through the big door at the back. She checked the gun one last time: safety, trigger, reload mechanism, clip, then stared at the red light above the door, waiting for it to turn yellow and silently counting down the seconds in her head.

 _ **Blam!**_

There was an explosion and a flash of white light that left a green afterimage on her retinas. It was followed by a rushing sound, a shout of alarm and surprise from Henry, and the sound of one of the pilots starting to talk. Yasmeen couldn't hear him. The rushing noise was still too loud, even through the headphones! He had slipped into the professional, rhythmic speech patterns of a pilot under intense pressure. Yasmeen realized she had her eyes closed, and she forced herself to open them.

In front of her, she saw a dark city skyline and thick banks of fog, flashing by below her, still tinged with the green afterimage of the flash of light. But no, that was impossible. The Skyranger didn't have any windows in the back! What-

Then she realized what had happened. One of the walls of the aircraft was suddenly completely gone! Henry was now sitting next to a gaping, jagged hole in the fuselage, letting her see clear out the side of the craft and along the left wing, over the city of Berlin below. What was more, the edges of that hole were still glowing bright red with the heat!

She looked around and saw the similarly disbelieving looks on the faces of the other soldiers. Before any of them could really react, though:

 _ **Blam!**_

There was a second flash, and Yasmeen's eyes automatically squeezed shut again.

When she opened them, her mouth fell open in horror. Out the gaping hole in the bulkhead, she could now see the left engine on fire. It too had a hole punched through it, but unlike the glancing hit the fuselage had taken, the hit had blown clear through the engine from below, leaving a hole on the bottom and a hole on the top, both belching flames and smoke. The world tilted, the ground came rushing up towards her. Whatever corner of her mind where her training slept registered Big Sky shouting for everyone to "brace for impact", and she dully noticed her hands working to buckle her back into her seat, and then extend to either side of her to grab onto the netting and handles that lined the Skyranger's walls. Suddenly, a rooftop became visible out the hole in the side, passing so close to the craft that it sheared the left wing clean off in a shower of sparks. She squeezed her eyes shut, and then...

 _ **Crrrrrrrrrrrunnnnch!**_

There was the sound of screeching, rending metal, and a sensation of her body straining against its restraints. A deafening sound of screaming from both her squad and herself. There was a lurch and a final, tooth-rattling crash. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended, and silence engulfed the Skyranger.

* * *

 _AN: Okay. One more chapter. I know I said that this one would be the end of the arc, but I guess I lied. There was just too much to cram into it, so it looks like there will be one more before the arc concludes. I promise to get this one done faster. I've already started on it, and that's a terrible place to leave the story for a long time, so... see you again soon with another one, this time one that actually wraps up the arc. It will likely be an unusually long chapter, but I'll try to keep it from getting too out of hand._

 _See you then._

 _-Thalgrond_


	6. Landfall Part 6

Yasmeen awoke unsure of where she was. She smelled smoke, heard the crackle of flames somewhere close by, and for a moment she thought she was back in Libya. Then she opened her eyes and saw the dark interior of the Skyranger wreck, and she remembered.

The Skyranger was on its side. Yasmeen was hanging by her restraints from her seat. Below her, Renaldo was lying with his head against the bulkhead, only a couple feet from the edge of the breach in the side of the Skyranger's fuselage, which had now become the floor. She couldn't see him very well in the low lighting, but she could tell that his eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.

She glanced around at her squadmates, cursing quietly in Arabic, and began to undo her restraints. She could smell jet fuel. Jet fuel and smoke. Not a good combination. "Oh... oh, come on! COME ON! _Ha Allah, Kess Ikhtak!_ " She leaned back, pushing against the belts, and finally, in desperation, she reached for the knife at her hip. Two quick cuts to the shoulder straps and she had more freedom of movement, then she made one last tug at the belt's buckle and it suddenly came loose, dropping her with a surprised and undignified squeak directly onto Renaldo.

He grunted in discomfort when she landed, and his head rolled to face her, eyes fluttering open. "Y-Yasmeen? Wha-?"

"Get up. Get up! They will have seen us go down, they'll be coming to check out the crash site."

"The- wait, who? What's going on?" Renaldo's eyes were wide with panic and confusion. Then there was a look of dawning comprehension. "Oh right. Aliens. Crap."

Yasmeen didn't respond, focusing instead on cutting Renaldo loose from his own restraints. "Okay," said Yasmeen, stepping aside and letting Renaldo get to his feet, "Let's see if Henry's okay. If he won't waken up, I'll need your help to move him."

"Move him where? The hatch is still closed, and the button's not glowing."

Yasmeen glanced at the door. Renaldo was right. She stepped past him and hit the release button. Nothing happened. "Damn. Alright, uh... out the new hole in the side. The aliens were nice enough to provide us with a new door, and it looks like there's enough space between the fuselage and the ground to slide out under."

Renaldo nodded. He was kneeling beside Henry, shaking the larger man, whose head was flopping this way and that. "Hunter's down for the count. You check Jackson, I'll see about the pilots." "Acknowledged." As Renaldo scrambled over loose pieces of equipment and made his way towards the door to the cockpit, Yasmeen moved forward, stepping over the gaping hole in the side of the craft, and approached Leon Jackson, hanging from his restraints the same way that she had been. She checked his pulse, found it, held a hand in front of his mouth and felt his breath on the palm, then leaned down to start working Henry free of his restraints. As she was doing so, though, she happened to look down through the hole, and spotted something that made her heart skip a beat. There, trickling across the ground, was a thin rivulet of liquid. She could tell from the smell that it was jet fuel.

"Renaldo?!" she shouted, looking towards the cockpit. Renaldo's head poked through the door. "Nothing in here but broken glass and corpses. The cockpit took the brunt-"

"We need to leave. Now. Try to unbuckle Jackson, then help me get Hunter out of here." Renaldo looked confused, but crawled back into the main compartment and began to help her without another word. Yasmeen stood up to help lift Jackson gently down from his restraints, then the two of them set about hauling Henry's bulk out through the hole in the fuselage, with Yasmeen pulling him through by the arms and then dragging him away from the wreck, while Renaldo went back in to get Jackson.

There was a tense few seconds. Yasmeen watched the twisted mass of metal and broken glass, her jaw clenched. That trickle of jet fuel had been moving quickly, and she had heard flames when she had first woken up. It was unlikely to happen, but if one found the other...

Finally, Renaldo re-emerged, and behind him the dazed-but-awake silhouette of Leon. Both men stood up and dashed towards her as soon as they were out of the melted gash in the side of the Skyranger. Yasmeen let out a breath she hadn't noticed she was holding and finally looked around to take in her surroundings.

The Skyranger had crashed on a straight, narrow cobblestone street lined with one-and two-story buildings, most of which appeared to be shops. It had left a trail of wreckage, broken flagstones, and shattered storefronts where the 40-tonne steel behemoth had plowed into the ground, a trail that quickly became lost in the gloom and the swirling mist. Judging by the quality of the light, she figured the sun must already be up. But the thick fog made it so that the light was dim and diffuse.

"What time is it?" she asked as the other two came to a stop in front of her. Renaldo checked his watch. "8:15. We were all out for nearly 40 minutes."

Yasmeen nodded, still looking at the Skyranger. "And whatever shot us down, it saw where we went. We should-"

She was interrupted by a loud groan from Henry. She wheeled to face him, just in time to see his eyes open. He looked around at the three soldiers standing around him, though he did so without moving his head. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips. "Where are my guns?" he asked at last.

Yasmeen laughed despite herself.

* * *

"What do you mean 'no radio contact'?!" roared the commander. The corners of the young communications ensign's mouth trembled, but otherwise, he maintained his composure remarkably well, continuing to stand at attention, staring straight ahead despite the fact that his superior officer was barely 8 inches from his face and very nearly frothing at the mouth.

"Sir! Communications were five-by-five until arrival at city perimeter! Lost volume and gained static gradually as the Skyranger continued into the fog bank-"

"I know! I know, I-" The commander rubbed the bridge of his nose and took a step back. "At ease, ensign." The young man shifted his stance accordingly. "Bradford! Come here!" the commander called, walking away and leaving the ensign standing at his station next to the main screens at the center of the operations room.

Bradford left his own workstation, moving to meet the commander. "Well, Central?"

"Sir?" Bradford's posture was much the same as the ensign's had been, straight-backed, feet together, gaze straight ahead.

"What now? We can't communicate with our operatives on the ground. That mist is messing with our radio signals somehow. What do you suggest?"

Bradford was getting frustrated. He was tempted to snap at his superior officer and suggest that he go and take a nap, change into his bloody X-com uniform and let Bradford work. Instead, he took a breath settled into an at ease stance, and said "Well sir. We now know why we lost contact with the military convoy. Hopefully, when the Skyranger's pilot realizes what's happening, he'll pull out of the city far enough for us to reestablish communications and make a plan going forward. Until then, I don't think there's anything we _can_ do."

The commander ground his teeth, staring past Bradford at the satellite images of Berlin that were up on the main bank of screens. Finally: "Fine. I'm going to go oversee the engineers' efforts to get this place up to full working order. Alert me if anything further happens."

"Yes, sir!" Bradford saluted, and the gesture was quickly returned. Then the commander turned on his heel and stalked off towards the nearest door, muttering under his breath.

Once he was out of the room, Bradford turned to the ensign. "As you were. Keep me updated on any radio signals you pick up, and keep an ear out for the Skyranger. And alert local authorities that we've lost contact. We might need their help in finding our squad if they remain missing."

* * *

The four soldiers crept slowly through the quiet streets of Berlin, assault rifles constantly at the ready, past abandoned cars and dark shopfronts. Yasmeen had tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to communicate with Algeria Base. She had given up now.

Henry Hunter had taken point, and was checking corners and peering down alleys as they went along. The other three scanned the rooftops and windows, keeping an eye out for any movement. What with the swirling mist and the poor visibility, Yasmeen kept thinking she saw shapes out of the corner of her eye. More than once, she had almost begun to raise her weapon before realizing that it was only an unusually thick bank of fog. The others were clearly all doing the same thing. They were all on edge.

After about five minutes of this, they came to their first probe. Henry spotted it first, pointing out a dull green glow to the rest of them. They all advanced on it together, but it turned out to only be one of the black, squat, lumpy goo canisters they had all seen on TV, sitting at an intersection in a crater of shattered cobblestones. It was venting thick, greenish mist that mingled into the fog bank, making the visibility in the area directly around the canister even worse than in the rest of the city. It was also surrounded by a green web-like structure of goo, though there didn't seem to be anyone caught in it. That struck Yasmeen as odd. From what the news was saying, they only activated when touched. What-

No, wait. There were holes, holes about the size of a human body. What's more, they each had charred edges, like they had been cut with blow torches or plasma welding cutters. "They were here," she said out loud. "The army convoy, I mean. They were here. They cut loose whoever was stuck in the goo, and moved on." "Alright," replied Henry, not looking at her and instead squinting out into the thick fog, "Which way do we go now?"

Yasmeen quickly glanced around for a hint as to which way the convoy had gone, but Jackson spotted it first. "That way!" he said, pointing down the street to the left. Yasmeen raised her eyebrow, and Jackson elaborated. "Look at the cars."

There were abandoned and parked cars strewn across the road at the intersection. It took Yasmeen a moment to see what Jackson was talking about, but when she did see it she grinned. "They moved the cars to the sides of the road, to clear a path for themselves. Presumably, that's the way they went."

Renaldo looked dubious. "They could have been going in the opposite direction, though."

"I doubt it," Yasmeen replied. She pointed along the street to the left: "That way leads towards the downtown, where most of the pods fell. They were trying to get people out of the webbing, right? Well, that's the direction where most of the trapped people will be."

Renaldo still looked uncertain, but he shrugged. "You're the boss, Abulrashid. We go where you tell us to."

Yasmeen nodded. "Alright, everyone: move out!"

The four of them continued towards the downtown as, somewhere beyond the city-wide bank of fog, the sun continued to rise, and the city got slowly brighter. They couldn't see the details of the office buildings in the downtown, but their tall, looming silhouettes could occasionally be glimpsed through the fog, over the rooftops of the shorter buildings around them, or else visible as distant glints reflected sunlight off their silvery sides.

After another few minutes, they came across another probe, again venting green mist, again with the web-like structure around it, again with holes burned to release the captured civilians. Yasmeen insisted they keep moving, or they were never going to have a hope of catching up, so they continued to follow the cleared path where abandoned cars had been shifted to clear a space wide enough to drive through.

"They'll be slowed down by the effort of moving cars," commented Renaldo after another minute or so.

"Yeah, and the time it must take to safely burn those webs to let a person out," added Jackson. At a slashing gesture from Yasmeen, both of them stopped talking, and continued in silence.

Another few steps, and they spotted the first corpse. Or at least, what was left of it. It was leaning up against the melted remnants of a bus shelter, its back to the structure, clearly using it as cover. It had clearly been hit by the same weapon that had burned a hole straight through the Skyranger. Compared to that, the flimsy shelter had been no trouble. The blast had ripped straight through both the shelter and the person hiding behind it. Based on what was left, they were able to determine that the person had been with the German military, but couldn't tell much more than that.

"Can you at least tell what sex they were?" asked Henry, keeping a lookout and deliberately not looking down.

Yasmeen, kneeling beside the soldier, shook her head. "Not easily, no. And that isn't our first priority." She reached a hand inside the soldier's uniform, feeling the unfortunately familiar texture of burnt flesh, and felt around until she found a chain. She pulled, but the thing that emerged was barely recognizable as a dog tag. It had been partially melted and deformed by the heat of the blast. Yasmeen dropped it with a hiss of pain.

"Still hot?" asked Renaldo. "Yeah." She sucked on her thumb. "'Nd tha's no' a goo' sign. Meansh thish wa' reshent..."

Henry, who had been craning his neck to see through the fog, spoke up. "Abulrashid. Ma'am. Up ahead. Orange light. Indistinct. Looks like fire."

Yasmeen got to her feet, hoisting her gun up to a ready position. "Test earpieces," she said, loud enough that they could all hear it, but not loud enough to carry much further. There were three blasts of static in short succession in her ear, as the other three all tuned in their earpieces. "Testing, testing," she whispered. "Alphas, check in." Three names were whispered one after another, each one picked up by their respective earpiece. Well, thought Yasmeen. Good to see that some signals at least work at short range in the fog.

"Go cover to cover. Use cars, buildings, anything. Just remember that no matter what you're hiding behind, it's concealment, not cover. There _is_ no hard cover on this battlefield." The other three nodded their understanding. "Good. Renaldo, Hunter, you're going down the centre. I'll take left, Leon, right. Understood?" More nods. "Alright. Move out."

The four soldiers scattered into the fog, heading towards the diffuse orange glow coming from up ahead. Yasmeen darted from car to car, keeping her head low and moving only when she was surrounded by a particularly dense patch of fog. It was slow going. Looking to her right, she could see Henry doing something similar, but Renaldo and Leon were, for the moment, out of sight.

Her earpiece crackled to life with Renaldo's voice: "Leon. You're too far ahead. Hold your position until we catch up." Hearing that, Yasmeen picked up the pace. She didn't want to get left behind, not in a situation like this.

A statue on a pedestal loomed suddenly out of the fog, in the centre of a small cobblestone roundabout and backlit by what was, by this point, very clearly firelight. Its flicker and the harsh reddish-orange tint it gave to the mist were unmistakable. She put a finger to her earpiece. "Renaldo, Hunter. Take cover behind the statue, and tell me what you see." "Acknowledged." She waited a moment, and then suddenly Hunter and Renaldo were next to the statue. She hadn't seen them move. One moment the space beside the pedestal was empty. The next they were there.

Henry's voice: "Ma'am. Three military vehicles, two on fire. Multiple casualties." Followed by Renaldo's: "I see four dead. All hit by that same weapon we've seen before. Heavily armed. Uniformed. Looks like we found the convoy, Yasmeen. No civilians, though. Don't know where they went."

Her mouth tightened. "Understood. I'm moving up." She darted from cover to cover until she came level with the statue, and was able to see the carnage herself. "They tried to take cover behind their armoured cars," she noted. "Look at the holes. Burned straight through the vehicles."

Leon's voice answered. "There's another probe, ma'am. A little beyond the farthest armoured car. They must have been in the middle of a rescue op when they got hit." A pause, then "Ma'am, I've got movement. Right flank, behind the military vehicle that's closest to me."

"Acknowledged. I see the car." She glanced around, then came to a decision. "Alright. Move up on my mark. Henry, prepare to give him covering fire if he needs it. I'm going to move forward as well, to the car in the middle. I'll see if I can get a good line of sight on some buildings around us. Renaldo, cover me. Ready?" She got confirmations from her team. She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She would have to run through open ground where at least 4 people had died recently... "Mark!"

She broke cover before she could second guess herself, dashing across the cobblestones towards the black armoured truck. The one in the middle was the only one of the three that wasn't on fire, since apparently nobody had used it as cover. At the same time, she heard rapid footfalls to her right, and saw Leon zip across to his own designated vehicle and vanish behind it.

She stopped, heart pounding, half-expecting a white flash and the feeling of a part of her torso disintegrating. _This was a stupid tactic!_ She thought to herself as she waited with bated breath.

Nothing.

She let the breath out and checked around the side of the armoured car. There were six more corpses that she could see now that hadn't been visible before. They had all seemingly died in an attempt to dash towards a building at the opposite end of the square, a low-roofed, small warehouse. All were uniformed. Still no sign of the civilians they had been rescuing, and now that she saw it she could see that the probe's green webbing was empty. Not burned away like the previous ones, there were smooth-edged, human-sized holes in the webs, with material bunched up around their edges like they had drawn back on their own to unentangle their captives.

The big double doors at the front of the building had been left slightly open, drawing her attention to it further.

Her earpiece crackled. "This is Jackson. The movement I saw was a soldier."

"Alive?"

"He was when I got here. Died as soon as I arrived. This skirmish was really recent, Yasmeen. The casualties are still-"

Yasmeen heard something, and she quickly hushed Leon. He shut up. _But not,_ she noted, _as quickly as a true Alpha would have. He isn't attuned to the team yet, and he might not get the chance._ She missed Vasylyna. If she had been here instead of Jackson, Yasmeen would have felt a lot better about the situation she found herself in.

She craned her neck, listening hard for any sound. It had come from the warehouse, of that she was certain. She checked the windows around the square one last time. Nothing. No figures. No alien shapes. No snipers ready to blast them with some sort of super-powerful disintegration beam. Nothing.

"Hunter. Garcia. Move up, right down the centre. Get to the warehouse at the far end of the square, and stack up on the door. Jackson and I will cover you, then we'll follow along while you cover us. Good?" "Acknowledged," came the chorus of male whispers over her earpiece. "Go!"

The shapes of Henry and Renaldo darted past her, heading for the door of the warehouse. As soon as they were there, she broke cover to follow them, making it there with her heart pounding in her throat. And still, no blasts of searing white death emerged from the windows of the buildings overlooking the square.

She looked at the other two, then touched her earpiece. "Leon, where-?" She saw him break cover and dash across the courtyard to join the rest of them. She gave him a disapproving look. "If you had hesitated that way while under fire-" "I know."

She glowered at him for a moment longer, then turned her head suddenly towards the door again. She had heard it again, and judging by the look on Henry's face, so had he.

"What was that?" she asked. "Voice," Henry responded. "Said one word. Two syllables. Starts with an H." They listened, and it came again.

"Hilfe... hilfe..."

"German. Means 'help'," said Henry, checking his rifle. "We can breach on your command, ma'am."

"Alright. Renaldo, left. Hunter, right. Breach on three. One. Two. Three!"

The four soldiers burst through the door into the dark interior of the warehouse. Yasmeen's eyes adjusted quickly, enough to see the stacks of crates along the walls, the forklift next to the door, and the dark figure standing at the far end of the warehouse, gun in hand.

"Hilfe..." it said again.

"Room is clear," said Hunter behind her, his voice echoing in her earpiece. She nodded, and gestured with one hand, the other holding tight to her rifle. Renaldo moved forward, taking cover behind the forklift. She joined him there, and the other two pressed themselves up against stacks of crates. "Whoever this person is, they're armed. Let's not take any chances," she whispered. "Cover to cover. Get as close as possible, then wait for further instructions." Nods from her squad, and at another gesture from her they all broke cover.

The person at the far end of the warehouse stood in a neutral stance, a rifle hanging loose in one hand, as the four soldiers made their way closer. As they approached, it became clear that the person was human, male, and totally unmoving. He didn't even turn his head to track their movement as they grew closer.

Finally, when they were each only a few paces from him, Yasmeen gave the order: "Hunter. Move in and disarm him. Carefully."

"Roger that." Henry stepped out from behind a pile of boxes and walked slowly toward the armed man, his own rifle ready but not raised. _Good to see that de-escalation training paying off,_ Yasmeen thought.

"He has a grenade," Henry muttered as he walked closer. The armed German man retained the same exact posture, rifle loose by his side, grenade in hand, as Henry walked closer. Henry turned on the light attached to the barrel of his gun, and brought it slowly up, not pointing directly at the man, but a little to the side, so as to be able to see his face.

The man's eyes were purple, bloodshot, and rolling wildly in their sockets. His jaw was slack. The muscles in his face twitched and tensed constantly.

"My god..." whispered Henry. He began to reach for the rifle...

Things started happening very fast. The rifle came up to point at Henry's chest; a loud "BANG!" echoed through the warehouse. Yasmeen flinched, but it wasn't Henry who fell. Instead, the German soldier crumpled to the floor under his own weight.

Henry looked down, touching his own chest. Then he looked up, grinning madly at Renaldo, whose rifle was still smoking. The two exchanged a moment of exhilaration at the fact that Henry wasn't dead...

And then _**Blam!**_

A white flash illuminated the whole warehouse, and half of Henry's torso disintegrated.

There was a shout, the sound of somebody unloading a full magazine of assault rifle ammunition. Yasmeen looked up as if in a daze, her eyes still stinging and imprinted with the green afterimage of the blast, and just for a second, she saw it. Something spindly and long-limbed darted across a gap between two stacks of crates. She raised her own gun to point at the place where she saw it last and waited for it to emerge again.

 _ **Blam!**_

She blinked in response to the flash, and this time when she opened her eyes again a piece of the crate she was hiding behind had vanished, and the rest was on fire.

She could hear Leon's heavy breathing and could see him hunkered down behind his own stack of boxes. She could see Renaldo trying to set himself up for a line of sight, but she also could tell that he had no idea where the alien was.

Fine. She would have to handle it herself.

She was surprisingly calm, even to herself, as she lined up the shot. She knew where it was, and she knew where it would have to lean to get a clear shot at her. So she pointed at that spot and waited.

...

...

"Come... on..."

...

"Come on... come on..."

A flicker of movement, but not from the place she was expecting it. She looked up just in time to see the _second_ alien clamber in through a window, high above her.

It was small, she realized. Very small. Knee height, she thought, though it was moving so fast she couldn't be sure. But definitely an alien. Of that much she was certain. And that was enough for her. She hauled her aim over to the new target and pulled the trigger.

The bullets sliced through the unarmoured target like a million hot knives through a vaguely human-shaped block of butter. The alien fell from the windowsill, halfway through lining up a shot of its own at Leon. She felt pleased with herself for a moment.

And that's when the hypnotized human's grenade went off.

Crates shattered. Leon screamed. Renaldo cursed. Yasmeen heard ringing in her ears. She brought her rifle up again to aim at the alien she knew must be there. She could see it moving, but couldn't get a shot off fast enough. She heard a rattle of gunfire as Leon unloaded his rifle, but the shots went wide. The shape darted across the room, settled on top of the stack of crates that Leon was hidden behind, aimed down-

 _ **Blam!**_

Another blinding flash. Yasmeen winced, saw what was left of Leon crumple to the floor, and then realized that the weapon had been turned on her again. She saw straight down its barrel, realized she was flanked with nothing hiding her. She looked death in the eyes.

 **Bang!**

 _ **Blam!**_

A gunshot, then an energy weapon discharge. Yasmeen felt a searing sensation across her left face and her whole left side, realized she was screaming, screaming, falling, down down down, into darkness and flame, and the fog, the fog everywhere, purple and green, purple, purple, leaking into her eyes and her heart and her mind...

Renaldo's face swam out of the darkness towards her. "Yasmeen! Yasmeen, hold on! I have the medkit from the Skyranger's cockpit! Hold on! You'll be fine!" then a long pause. She heard helicopter blades, first far away, then closer, then deafeningly loud. Then Renaldo was back: "They're pulling us out! Yasmeen, we're going home! Yasmeen? Yasmeen!" What was he talking about? She wasn't sure.

 _I'm going into shock,_ realized the part of her mind that was still working. _Well. No point stopping it now. Nighty night._

Her last thought was nice enough to turn off the lights on the way out.

* * *

 **AN:** ...And that's the end of the Landfall arc! And honestly, how else could I have ended it than with a dramatic recreation of the tutorial mission?

What next? And I'm seriously asking, since while I do have some ideas for what I want to do with the rest of this series, I am very much open to suggestions. What would you like to see happen with this story from here on out? And what should the title of the next arc be? There should definitely be an arc at some point called "Meld", one called "The Long War", and one, obviously, called "Enemy Within", where EXALT is introduced, but beyond that I don't actually have very many ideas for more arc titles. I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Note that most arcs will not be nearly as long as this one. I'm thinking an average of 3 chapters each, as opposed to the 6 of this one. Each arc will generally follow a single combat operation, the leadup to it, its aftermath and/or whatever's going on back at the base at the same time, but not always. For example, an arc focusing mostly on Vahlen might not have a combat operation at all. One covering a timespan of a month might have 5 combat ops. And this one covered barely any of the aftermath of the op, but spent 4 chapters on the buildup for it. (That will certainly not be standard.)

I have a question for my followers: having read this chapter, do you think the story should be re-rated "M"? Because I'm not quite sure where the line is between those two ratings.

Any further questions you might have about the story, feel free to ask them in the comments or by private message. I'll be sure to answer.

 _\- Thalgrond_


	7. Landfall Epilogue

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Council of Nations. Our time has come.

"By now each of you has surely received the report from the operation in Berlin. While the loss of privates Hunter and Jackson is deeply regrettable, I think the report speaks for itself as to the potential of the X-com initiative. The Commander responded quickly and efficiently to the situation A squad of 4 soldiers was able to go up against aliens with vastly superior technology that the German military was unable to deal with, and cleared a path for search and rescue teams to enter the area safely. It's only a matter of time before Moira Vahlen, the objective of this mission, is found, and in that way, I think this can be considered a success.

"However.

"The X-com project has very little funding currently. Their on-base staff consists of less than 50 people, most of them political refugees. Their transport aircraft is wrecked, and the repairs or rebuilding of it will require more resources than the organization has access to. For these reasons and others, I believe that our best course of action is to authorize full activation of the X-com project, as put forward in the documents written at its founding. While I recognize that each of you has the interests of your own nation at heart, if the X-com project is to be our first and last line of defense, they will require the absolute support of all member nations. This activation of the project could be the thing that saves us as a species. Do I hear any objections?

...

"Good. I will contact the Commander immediately. Good luck, ladies and gentlemen."


	8. Helpless Part 1

_Those first weeks of the war... I don't think anyone outside of X-com understood just how bad things were. Everything seemed to be moving so fast, and it was frustrating just how slowly we were responding. The world was spinning out of control, and we were so overwhelmed by the shock of the invasion that we couldn't do a thing about it._

* * *

Moira Vahlen sat on the roof of her car with Hanna and one of her bridesmaids, watching through the swirling fog as the German soldiers load people into the helicopters standing ready by the side of the road. Police lights flashed through the fog, bathing the whole scene in a blue strobe effect. Up ahead, more soldiers cleared away abandoned cars up onto the sidewalks, and erected concrete traffic dividers, trying to restore the flow of traffic.

She heard someone clamber up onto the car beside her, and turned her head to face the new arrival. Lily smiled ruefully and held up a bottle. "Here. Amalie managed to snag a bottle of red wine from the bachelorette party as we left." She glanced past Vahlen at Hanna. "Sorry about this, Hanns. The whole... aliens thing... I mean, it couldn't have happened at a worse time for you, right?" Hanna returned Lily's smile, although more bitterly. "Yeah, you got that right. On the other hand, though, everyone wants their wedding to be an interesting story to tell years down the line. I was kind of concerned mine would be forgettable, but now look. 'Kids, did I ever tell you that your dad and me were supposed to get married on the day that aliens attacked Earth?'" Lily smirked and reached across Vahlen to hand the bottle to Hanna, who accepted it and pulled out the cork, which had clearly already been removed a few times. "And then I sat on the roof of a car and drank wine without a glass. Perfect night. Really memorable." She took a swig- probably more than she should have, and lay back, her legs dangling off the edge of the car, placing the bottle, still open, on the roof beside her.

"So how long until we can get out of here?" Vahlen asked Lily, switching from German to English and lowering her voice. None of the others needed to concern themselves with the logistics of this. They had enough to worry about already. She had tried to organize people on her own, but, through some trick that Vahlen still didn't quite understand, Lily had managed to wiggle her way into the position of second in command, seemingly without even meaning to.

"A few more hours, at least," said Lily. "They say there's a safe zone set up at Schonefeld Airport, outside the area where the canisters landed. I don't know how far away that is, but-" Vahlen grimaced, and Lily mirrored her expression. "Not close, I take it."

"No. Not close. That's in East Berlin. I'm not sure how fast those helicopters of theirs fly, but with refuelling and having to go both ways, they probably can't make a round trip in any less than 20 minutes."

"Well, you know, you could tell them who you are. It might get you a quicker ticket out of the city. You said X-com wants you on their team, right?"

Hanna started to snore. Vahlen picked up the bottle of wine where she had dropped it and took a sip before responding. "They offered me a position in their labs years ago. Almost unlimited funding for my research. Very little oversight. A dream come true for most scientists and engineers, especially those of us who work on topics of such... dubious public image. I've been laughed out of boardrooms when I asked for grants, and here comes X-com with its military funding and international support, asking me to lead its theoretical xenobiology unit. This was back in 2010 and 2011, back before X-com was a joke in the mind of the general public."

"Why didn't you take it?"

"I never thought that first contact with aliens would go like this. It just doesn't make sense. What could they possibly want from us?" She shook her head. "It was _always_ a joke to me, even back then, when the organization had a lot of public support. I was always on the SETI side of the first contact argument. Uh, SETI... Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. This was a rivalry that lasted for years, and you've probably never even heard of it." Lily raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a moment and Vahlen sighed. "Well, it looks like we've got time. So, uh, SETI was sort of an unofficial organization. Or more of a philosophical following, really. It was an initiative, and not in the organized, centralized way that X-com is." Her mouth tightened as she tried to decide how best to explain SETI as a concept without boring her listener. She still wasn't sure just how patient Lily really was. She seemed eager enough, (understandable, given how important the topic of alien contact had just become) but Vahlen still was wary to get too in-depth with her explanation.

"SETI predated X-com," she began, choosing her words carefully. "In fact, in a way, X-com was an offshoot of SETI. SETI was the group that came up with the Rio scale, for instance. The difference was, SETI was actively looking for aliens. It was based on optimism; curiosity. Not the fear and xenophobia that motivated the foundation of X-com."

"Interesting as this is," Lily said, and Vahlen almost flinched. She'd explained too much, she was certain of it. Lily continued, "now that X-com is activated and useful, you're going to join up with them, right? That was what the call you made right before we left was?" Vahlen nodded. "So why don't you just tell them who you are?"

Vahlen shrugged. "No rush, the way I see it. I don't even think they would recognize my name. I'm not sure X-com thinks I'm even important enough to tell the local authorities about me, so they'd have to check in with their superiors. And with radio signals being blocked by whatever this is-" she waved her hand, causing the fog to swirl in ragged scraps "it'll probably take a while anyway. Besides," She turned to smile down at Hanna, who was now snoring contentedly on the car roof. "Seems to me that I shouldn't be abandoning all of you just yet."

Lily smiled down at Hanna as well, looking like she wanted to say something further. Then her eyes wandered, and she frowned. "Moira... look over there." Vahlen followed her gaze and saw a brown-skinned woman being carried on a stretcher by two burly German soldiers. The right side of her face looked badly burned, and she was wearing a strange uniform- dull red-umber combat armour with a black, pentagonal patch on the front and the shoulders, worn over a dark green jumpsuit. It looked to have taken quite a beating, (as had the woman wearing it) and it took Vahlen a few moments to recognize it as a result of the large portions that had been burned away.

"Is that-?" Lily started, and Vahlen nodded.

"X-com. I thought they'd be here."

"She doesn't look good," Lily commented as the soldiers began to load her onto the helicopter, and Vahlen nodded in agreement. "Moira, you should go talk to them. Find out what happened. Tell them who you are." Vahlen started to open her mouth to protest, but Lily cut her off. "No, Moira. Hanna will be fine. So will all of us. We have each other, and it looks like this area is pretty well guarded anyway. X-com needs people like you. You should go. I'm sure Hanna will call you once we get out of the fog. Don't worry about us." Vahlen still wanted to argue, but at length, she sighed and slid off the top of her car.

"Alright. Here. The car keys." She dug them out of her purse and offered them to Lily. "Keep them safe, Lily. Call me when you all get out." Lily took them and nodded. "I'll make sure Hanna-" "Yes, her as well. But I'd also like to know that _you_ are safe." Lily hesitated for a moment, then nodded again. "Good. Thank you, Lily. Goodbye."

With that, she turned on her heel and marched off between the rows of parked and idling cars, towards the German soldiers who were helping load four X-com operatives, in various states of life, death, and injury, onto one of the waiting helicopters.

* * *

"New radar contact! Yoo-Eff-Oh Zero-Zero-Two marked on main map!"

Bradford looked up at the main map with a jolt, his head almost moving fast enough to give him whiplash.

The airman at the radar station spoke in a precise but rapid-fire stream of data, honed by years of training, relaying all the important facts. "Very small contact, stealthed, in atmospheric flight, altitude seven-zero kilometres. In flight over South Atlantic Ocean. Velocity: One-Five-Five-Zero-Zero Metres Per Second; velocity decreasing rapidly."

Bradford nodded. An aerobrake manoeuvre, most likely, decreasing its speed to drop it into a stable orbit around the planet. He watched the red, pulsating blip on the main map move slowly across the Atlantic, having to remind himself that its 'slow movement' was actually representing a speed of over 15 kilometres per second. He frowned suddenly as a thought occurred to him: _That speed in an atmosphere... m_ _y God! What kind of materials are these things using!? No metallic materials could handle the heat and no ablative ceramics could deal with the pressure..._

He shook his head. Of course the aliens had access to higher tech than X-com did. After all, they'd crossed the vast gulfs of interstellar space to get here, while humanity hadn't ever even gone beyond the moon.

"Central, sir?" the airman prompted, and Bradford nodded at him. "Duly noted, airman Hanson. Continue tracking it, along with the primary contact. There's nothing else we can do. It's moving too fast for our interceptors to have a hope of catching it. Lieutenant Bashara, inform the commander."

A pair of "yes, sir"s responded to his orders, and Hanson and Bashara both moved to execute them, but there was an air of disappointment in the room.

 _I know,_ Bradford thought. He couldn't say anything out loud; duty and respect of station, doncha know. Just like he couldn't offer an apology to Alpha squad when the commander insisted on sending them into Berlin a member short. His mouth twisted in a grimace that he carefully hid by looking down at a stack of paper on his desk. _I know, really. But what else am I supposed to do? I was telling the truth, there really is nothing else we can do. We can't even touch the bastards!_

He looked up at the map again, watching the blip as it roared across the Atlantic at orbital velocity. _Well,_ he thought, _As long as it isn't doing anything-_

"Sir!" the airman shouted. "Contact Zero-Zero-Two has adjusted course! Ascending! Now en route to X-com radar satellite nine!" Bradford's jaw muscles tightened, and he felt himself rise from his seat. A second blip, this one flashing purple, appeared on the map, and he could do nothing but watch as the two dots converged. Then the purple one was gone, and the red dot continued on its way. He heard himself and the room as a whole let out the breath he hadn't realized they had been holding. He heard one of the airmen close to him whisper the word "no..." But it wasn't done yet.

"Contact Zero-Zero-Two adjusting course! En route to radar satellite six!"

And so it went.

* * *

 _AN: Hey, Vahlen! Long time no see! Aren't you supposed to be, like, a main character?_

 _I kid, I kid. Vahlen will get her moment of fame, come the Meld arc._


	9. Helpless Part 2

The overhead doors of the hangar bay cracked open, letting in a shaft of sunlight, a shower of fine desert sand, and the distant sounds of spinning helicopter blades. Nurses and doctors stood ready near the pad in the centre of the hangar bay, prepared to rush forward as soon as the helicopter touched down. They'd all received the preliminary reports, though, and they knew there was only one soldier they were likely to be able to save. A little beyond them were the commander and Bradford, along with a small gathering of aides.

The sound of the blades got steadily louder for a few minutes, and then all at once, it became deafening as the helicopter itself became visible above the hangar bay doors. Its pilot knew what he was about, and he eased himself down into the vast cavern, the doors closing above him just as his landing gear touched down on the pad. Wind whipped around the vast space, and the thin layer of sand and dust on the floor (omnipresent at Sahara Base, despite the efforts of the janitorial staff) was picked up in eye-stinging sheets and dust devils.

As soon as the twin rotors were spun down enough to be safe, the side of the helicopter slid open and the medical staff rushed forward, efficiently removing all three of the gurneys inside and moving them across the hangar bay, checking the readouts of the instruments attached to each of their occupants. One, Specialist Hunter, was clearly already dead, but they wheeled him off towards the infirmary anyway. Behind them, still on his feet but looking ashen and distant, Specialist Garcia stepped down from the helicopter as well. A medic hurried forward to offer support if he needed it, but he waved her away and staggered off across the hangar to try to catch up with the speeding gurneys and the people clustered around them.

Bradford stood impassively watching, slightly behind and to the right of the commander, as the rest of the helicopter's passengers disembarked at a more leisurely pace: an X-com engineer, late to the party, who had gotten aboard the helicopter at its stopover in Algiers; two German doctors, both who looked absolutely exhausted from staying awake and vigilant over the wounded for the entire 10-hour flight; two more gurneys were removed from the helicopter, these ones covered in white sheets but with an oily greenish-yellow ichor seeping through and plastering the sheets to the occupants. The heads of most of the people in the hangar bay turned as one to watch as these two were wheeled away, towards the research lab.

Finally, a blonde woman, somewhere in her late thirties, stepped down gingerly from the helicopter's interior. Unlike everyone else in the vast cavern of the hangar, she was in civilian clothes. In fact, it seemed she had been at a party of some sort. She was wearing a classy, tight-fitting red dress (though it had been stained with oil, grit and yellowish blood during the two helicopter rides and one plane flight that had carried her here), her hair was tastefully arranged (though rebelliously working its way free of its constraints), and although her feet were bare as they touched the rough, sandy metal of the Skyranger pad, she carried a pair of high-heeled shoes. Her hands were covered up to the wrist in that same yellowish body fluid, and she actually still carried a scalpel in one hand, similarly stained.

She took a couple of steps towards the alien corpses, clearly eager to continue with the work she'd been doing during the flight, then stopped when she noticed the command staff standing nearby. She glanced back and forth between the retreating shapes of the gurneys and the eyes of the commander, then sighed, her shoulders slumping in a way that was just barely visible, then made her way across the hangar towards him as the cadavers vanished through a set of swinging double doors.

"Commander," she said as she approached him, her Alsace-Loraine accent noticeable but not unintelligibly thick. "My name is Moira Vahlen. I understand you've been looking for me."

The commander bowed slightly, though his eyes never left her. "Pleasure. Now. Has anyone filled you in?"

"Not as much as I'd have liked."

"Right. Well. To give you the short version: we're operating blind and mute. These aliens, whatever they are, have launched attacks on the orbital infrastructure, not just of us, but of every council nation. They know who's supporting our cause, and as of nine hours ago, none of those people had satellites anymore; this includes our radar satellites, the US and EU systems of GPS platforms, communications satellites of all sorts, even radio and satellite television. As far as we can tell, the aliens have assessed us as a threat; after all, our operatives just became the first people to ever survive an encounter with them, though as far as I can tell that was simple dumb luck. At any rate, they are doing everything they can to isolate us. The few satellites still in orbit belong to non-council nations, and those people are understandably hesitant to hand those satellites over to us, since as soon as they do, most likely, these aliens will blow them out of the sky as well. So we haven't had much contact with the outside world in the last few hours. We're too isolated to be connected to anywhere important via fiber-optics, so as of now we're getting our news the old fashioned way. Via courier van."

Vahlen's lips had grown thinner and thinner as this explanation was given. Otherwise, though, she showed little sign of her feelings on the matter. "I see," she said at length. "How many ships do-?"

"That I'll leave for you to discuss with Bradford, my second in command here at the base. He was in the operations center while all this was going on, so he knows the full extent of the situation. I'm sure he can clear some space in his schedule to fill you in?"

The commander glanced at Bradford, who forced himself to smile. "Certainly. I have time to play the gracious host." He didn't have time, of course. His schedule was over-stuffed as it was. The new engineers were arriving this afternoon, new scientists half an hour after that, he had meetings with the Council's budget committee, the Algerian press, followed immediately by an international press meeting. He would have to delegate some of those tasks, and although he knew that was part of his job as Central Officer, he hated to do it. But the commander had asked him to do something. He was going to do it. Maybe he could cut back his sleep time a bit more each night. Four hours would be enough, right?

The commander smiled back at him very, very briefly, then returned his attention to Vahlen. "Welcome to Sahara Base, doctor. I'll remind you that in order to get you here, people have been injured and killed. I hope you prove to be worth their sacrifice."

"I do as well, commander," she replied with feeling.

* * *

Sahara Base was swarmed by contractors and engineers over the course of the next few days. Run-down pickup trucks and ancient, rusting European-built cars filled up the parking lot in front of the base's main elevator, quickly overfilled it and began to overflow onto the road and into the surrounding desert. Construction workers clambered over the catwalks high above the Ops center, dashed through corridors, filled up staff rooms on their coffee breaks; they replaced old hardware with the newest, top-of-the-line versions, fixed pieces of machinery that hadn't worked properly in years. The on-base staff became more and more used to having their walks through the base interrupted when an engineer emerged from a ventilation duct in front of them. At first, the base staff and soldiers waited patiently for the engineers to get to their feet. After a few days, it became customary to just step over them.

That was nothing compared to the bustle and pandemonium in the hangar. The original Skyranger had been constructed in eighteen months. This time, the plan was to have it done in a little more than a week. This was a plan insisted on by the Commander, and at first, Bradford had thought it was ridiculous. Strangely, though, it seemed to be working so far. The engineers were almost completely on schedule, with only the dual phase ramjet/rocket engines giving them difficulty. It helped that this time they were working from preexisting blueprints, but still, the speed at which they assembled the metal behemoth squatting in the middle of the hangar was astounding. Within three days, the chassis was taking on the recognizable shape of the original Skyranger, and it had enough structural stability and footholds that the engineers working on it could clamber up onto the airframe as they worked, scrambling all over the huge piece of machinery day and night like especially industrious ants. It was as good as Bradford could have hoped for. In fact, as it turned out, it was a good deal better.

"The foreman intends to have the Skyranger up and running by the seventeenth," Bashara told him one evening when she intercepted him in one of the busy service corridors on his way to a strategy meeting with the commander. He never had time to receive her reports anymore, but she _made_ him have time, goddammit!

Bradford squinted at her as if he thought she might be joking, or that he must have misheard her. "The seventeenth? That's... that's two days _ahead_ of schedule! How did they-?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure, sir; I'm not an aeronautical mechanic any more than you are. But that's what he says, and he's met every deadline he's set for himself so far. I don't see any reason to doubt him."

Bradford flattened himself against the wall as a small forklift trundled past with several crates and boxes on its prongs, taking up most of the width of the corridor. This had become a normal sight at Sahara Base in the last few days, and neither he nor Bashara paid it any mind. "What's his name again?" he asked once the noisy machine had passed.

"Shen, sir. Roger-" She glanced down at the clipboard braced against her chest "Scratch that. _Raymond_ Shen. He headed up the design team for the proposed Skyranger 3H. You remember, sir; the one that was supposed to carry 9 soldiers plus the pilots?"

"I remember. I wish we had that in the budget when it was proposed. Two fire teams plus a squad leader is a respectable fighting force. Four soldiers have never seemed like enough to me. I suppose it's a bit too late to start building it now, not when we've never even built a prototype for it and it's almost certainly going to come with its own difficulties and unforeseen design kinks that will take time and money to solve." Bradford rubbed his chin. He would have to shave this evening, he thought absently. It had been days since he'd had even a few minutes to himself. "Alright. I have other things to get to right now; I'm late, actually. Can you see whether this Shen fellow is willing to have a meeting with the commander and I, say, two days from now? Or whenever it's convenient. You have my schedule, and you probably know it a lot better than I do."

Bashara raised an eyebrow at him, smirking. "I'm not your secretary, John."

Bradford shot her a sharp look, and she shrunk into herself for a moment, then snapped to attention with a salute. "Yes sir, Central Officer Bradford. Right away, sir." He nodded, said the word "Dismissed," just loud enough to be heard over the noise echoing through the corridor, and set off towards the commander's apartments, ducking aside as a large group of Algerian contractors walked past, arguing heatedly in Arabic with an on-base engineer.

* * *

Farid Abulrashid entered the infirmary, taking off his hat in a way that was quickly becoming routine. He'd visited 7 times in the past 3 days, and now it didn't even take a disproving glance from a nurse to convince him to remove it. He walked down the rows of empty bunks, each perfectly made, with regimented sheets and pillows identically arranged, ready to receive patients. Farid reflected that those bunks probably wouldn't be nearly so empty for long.

He came to the only bunk which had its curtains drawn, forming a barrier between it and the rest of the room. He hesitated a moment, though he couldn't say quite why. Then he brushed the curtain aside.

Yasmeen was exactly where she had been when he had left the previous day. She didn't appear to have even moved in her sleep since then. He had a moment of panic when he realized that, just as he always did, but the steady beeping of the cardiac monitor by her bedside reassured him. She was pale. Possibly more pale than she was the previous day, though he couldn't be sure. It might have just been the lighting, or his own imagination triggered by his worry for her.

Renaldo was asleep in the chair beside her, his head slumped down onto his own chest, slouching in the chair, with one of his legs extended under the hospital bed. It looked like a very uncomfortable position. He would be sore when he woke up.

This wasn't the first time that Farid had found Renaldo like that. And similarly, Renaldo had found Farid in a similar situation more than once in the past few days. He stepped over Renaldo's extended leg, careful not to disturb him, and stood by the bedside, looking down at his sister's sleeping face.

She was thin. Thinner than he had remembered her. Of course that made no sense. She had almost certainly been eating better ever since she left Libya. But she still looked small to him. Helpless. Vulnerable, in a way he had never seen her before. Even when sleeping, her jaw muscles had always been working, grinding her teeth. There had always been something in the set of her shoulders that had whispered _strength_ , even while she slept. There was power in her, and responsibility, and quiet anger like he had never seen from anyone else. She had scared him when he was younger. Now he felt a sudden wave of protectiveness wash over him.

Farid had never been in a position where he was able to protect her. Before their father had left them, a rifle in his hands, on the back of an old truck, he had told Farid in no uncertain terms that he was supposed to look out for her, as her older sibling and as the man in the household, but in truth it had always been the other way around. She was the one who had kept them alive in their father's absence. She had been the one who had stepped up and become the head of the household, despite being only 15 at the time. She had learned to shoot far better than he could ever hope to, she had looked after their other siblings and cousins when their mother was killed in a mortar strike, and when the war washed over their little village, she was the one who had taken charge in getting everyone to safety, and then in getting some of the known loyalist sympathizers out of the country before they could fall into insurgent hands.

Even before that, Yasmeen had never acted like his little sister. He'd never gotten to see that side of her. In fact, as hard as he tried, he couldn't think of another time he'd ever seen her looking vulnerable. It scared him. She didn't seem like the same person, and he worried that without that fight in her she might... she might not...

There was a sudden snort from behind him, followed by a confused "W-Wha?" and then a series of muttered words in Spanish that he didn't understand. He turned to face Renaldo as he scrambled upright in his chair.

"Farid?"

"Yes."

"How long was I asleep?"

"I don't know, mister Garcia. I just got here a minute ago."

"Right. What time is it?"

"Seven."

"I should be at the shooting range."

Farid nodded, and continued to stare at him, but despite his admission that he had somewhere to be, Renaldo didn't move.

"She doesn't look like herself," Farid said at length, turning his attention back to Yasmeen.

"I know what you mean. It's like... the fire's gone out."

"I'm worried, mister Garcia."

"Yeah. Me too, Farid."

"The doctors at least say she's likely to recover. They did not seem certain about that, however. Not as certain as I'd like."

"Well, they've never dealt with anything like this before. None of us have."

Renaldo got slowly to his feet, bracing himself against a chair and massaging one of his legs, which had evidently not woken up with the rest of him. They both stood staring down at Yasmeen's pale face, the right cheek still covered by bandages to hide part of the burn.

"I feel kind of guilty," Renaldo said after another long pause. "I couldn't keep her safe. I shot the thing that got her, but... it's not enough. I was slow. Sloppy."

Farid sighed. "Don't blame yourself, Renaldo. It's not your fault that the apocalypse decided to land on your doorstep." There was still another long pause. The cardiac monitor beeped consistently, slowly, like a ticking clock. "You should get to the shooting range. You still have duties to attend to."

"I do." Renaldo sighed and picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "I'll see you later, Farid. Have somebody come get me if she wakes up, alright?"

"I promise, mister Garcia."

"Thank you."


	10. Helpless Part 3

_First gen interceptors? Uh, we're talking about the old Raven Mark 1 here? Oh, they were total crap. Too specialized for speed. Fast, I'll give them. Faster than almost any other aircraft in the world at the time they were designed. But in a dogfight? It was a lot like flying a rocket-powered bathtub. Heck, just landing the damn thing was nerve-wracking! And when we got the news we were going to have to take them into combat, well... let's just say the other pilots and I were less than thrilled._

* * *

Vahlen stared in rapt fascination at the tiny crystalline shard under her microscope. She still had no idea what it was, and couldn't give even the first guess as to how it could be replicated, but the mystery excited her in spite of the circumstances that brought it about.

"Doctor Vahlen?"

She looked up, swivelling her stool to look towards the thin, balding, middle-aged black man standing at the door connecting her cramped private lab to the far larger primary research centre.

"Yes, Ingwe? What is it?" It came out rather more snappy than she would have liked.

"Doctor, we've discovered something about the genetics of the 'sectoids that you might find interesting."

Vahlen wasn't sure where that name had come from. The rest of the research team had started calling them that partway through the preliminary analysis of her autopsy on the helicopter on the way to base, and whoever had coined the term, (though she didn't know any of them well enough to make more than an educated guess, Vahlen suspected it had been Zema, the rather loud-mouthed lab assistant) the name had stuck. The aliens weren't especially insect-like unless one was talking about their innards, and even then it was only a cursory resemblance, and Vahlen almost winced every time the name was used. Still, it gave them something to call the creatures, and a nonsensical moniker was better than no moniker at all.

She sighed, leaned back from the microscope, and turned off the light under the sample. "Alright. Tell me. What have you found?"

Ingwe was Kenyan, and his voice was heavily accented. It became more so when he was excited, and at that moment it was almost unintelligible. Vahlen's eyes widened gradually in an expression of abject panic as she realized she was barely understanding anything he said, catching maybe every third word. "Alright! Hang on!" she interjected at length, and Ingwe cut himself off mid-sentence, looking at her quizzically. She took a breath, letting the tension ease from her shoulders. "Slower, please, Ingwe. I'm German. English isn't my first language, and I have a hard enough time with understanding it as it is."

"I know what that's like, _Mzungu._ " Ingwe's eyes twinkled. "Alright. I will try to contain my enthusiasm. What I was saying is that, according to my interpretation of the data at least, these aliens appear to be heavily genetically modified. Possibly to the point of having their entire genome tailored. Almost certainly, the original creature this genome belonged to would have appeared almost entirely different."

Vahlen leaned forward abruptly, her elbows resting on her knees, eyes narrowing. "Say more." She gestured to another stool much like her own, not taking her suddenly intense gaze from Ingwe for even a second. Ingwe shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot under that stare but took the offered seat. She was his superior, after all.

"Well, ma'am... as with any genome on Earth there appear to be a certain number of inactive genes in the 'sectoid chromosomes." Vahlen nodded. It was still bizarre to her just how similar the creatures were to creatures here on Earth. They were made of cells; their genes were made of DNA and organized into chromosomes; their cells had a nucleus (of sorts, although its membrane seemed to be structured slightly differently); in a lot of ways, they were very familiar. It was confusing to somebody like Vahlen, with an intuitive understanding of the amount of random chance involved in the development of life. "Now, I'm not certain of this yet, mind you, but like I hinted in my last report to you, there is a possibility that there are more of these... uh... 'junk' genes than one would expect to see from something naturally created."

Vahlen winced at the word 'junk.' "Inactive. Please. We're both academics. You don't need to dumb down your explanations of things for me." Ingwe nodded, waving a hand dismissively. "At any rate," he continued, "I won't know for certain until I can study some living 'sectoid cells, but it seems to me that some of those genes just don't make sense as inactive. The reasons are complicated, they involve the placement of key operons in the chromosome, it's all in my most recent report, but I know you're busy, so to summarize: I think they should have mouths. There are genes in there that code for calcium compounds not found anywhere in the creature's body, and that would make an excellent material for teeth."

"Yes, I was wondering about that. The structure of their head suggests that they should also have hinged jaws. But why would they be purposefully removed during the genetic editing process?"

Ingwe shrugged. "I haven't a clue, ma'am. I don't think anyone really understands anything about the invaders. I'm just telling you things I observed."

"I wasn't asking you. Just musing to myself. You'll have to forgive me this habit."

"Not a problem, _Mzungu_. I do it myself on occasion, though in my case such musings are usually done in Swahili."

The two exchanged a warm smile and a moment of companionable silence. Finally, Ingwe asked, in his turn, "What are you working on?"

"One of the weapon fragments recovered from the warehouse in Berlin." Vahlen turned the light back on under the wafer-thin sheet of crystal. "The weapons self-destructed as soon as the aliens died, so I have no idea how they worked when they were intact, but my suspicion is that this crystalline substance was used as the energy source. It's infuriating. I don't have any idea what it's made of. It returns negative on every chemical test I run on it, it emits a radiation curve I've never seen before-" she noticed Ingwe lean hastily backwards and added quickly "perfectly harmless, it's mostly in the form of alpha particles, so as long as you don't eat the sample you'll be fine." Ingwe smiled in mixed relief and amusement, but Vahlen simply frowned in frustration. "It's like it's taunting me, Ingwe. I don't know what it is. I don't know where it came from, or how it's made. It's bizarre. It's incredibly hard; I needed to have this sliver scraped off with a diamond cutter, and it went through 2 blades in the process. It's radioactive like I already told you. When exposed to a rotating magnetic field and attached to a circuit, it generates a current as if it was a spool of copper wire. And on top of that, this stuff lases! It's a radioactive energy source and a laser medium at the same time. It's just not fair, Ingwe. Nothing behaves like this! _Nothing!_ Besides that, it glows when exposed to x-rays, and emits beta radiation when UV hits it. Don't worry, the lab lights don't emit any UV, I checked." Again, Ingwe had started to lean away from the material, this time glancing at the light fixture above Vahlen's desk. "I just don't understand it. I've been running tests on it for days, and I have no leads beyond some details about its infuriatingly bizarre behaviour."

Ingwe was quiet for a moment, then said "I'm no materials scientist, Vahlen. I'm a geneticist, and not all of us in the lab can be prodigy polymaths focusing on the study of alien life."

Vahlen smirked, a snort of air escaping through her nose despite her best efforts. "You should get to bed. You should have been off-duty two hours ago, and right at the moment any time you can grab between shifts should be spent in bed. There's little enough time for rest as it is without pulling all-nighters to finish some work you're going to get around to in the morning anyway."

"Yes. I will go sleep once I have gotten something to eat at the mess hall. You should rest also, _Mzungu_."

"I'm a boss. Bosses don't sleep."

"Look, ma'am, even ignoring the fact that it's unhealthy to stay awake as much as you have been, it's also only a matter of time before it starts to affect your productivity. You are working too hard, and you risk making a mistake."

"I don't make mistakes."

Now it was Ingwe's turn to stare. At length, she sighed. "Fine. I suppose I can get around to this in the morning. I'll go to bed soon. I just had a coffee, though. I won't be able to sleep just yet."

"Yes, well, there was another reason I came in here. Something that might keep you busy for a while."

"Oh?"

"The new landlines to replace the communications satellites have been completed. A lot of people are getting in touch with people outside the base. And I was asked to tell you that there are several messages for you from various concerned people. Parents. Your sister. And some people from 'the bachelorette party' who want to let you know they're okay, and they made it out of Berlin alright. I don't know which bachelorette party specifically, but that's what I was told to pass along to you."

Vahlen stared at the crystalline sample still sitting on the microscope. She switched off the light under it. "Alright. Where are the phones that we can use for personal calls?" she asked, and Ingwe smiled in triumph.

"Down the hall to the left, seventh door. You can't miss it, it's the door labelled 'phones' in eight languages."

The two walked together out of Vahlen's little cubbyhole and through the main research lab, past half a dozen experiments and sample examinations in progress. The labs were never empty and hadn't been any time in the last four days, not since the first contact incident. Shifts 2 and 3 were active now since it was approaching one AM. Vahlen and Ingwe were both members of Shift 1, the researchers who worked straight through the day from 7 AM to 11 PM. Everyone was working 16-hour shifts in the lab. It was true what Vahlen had said about how difficult it was to find time to sleep. It was a constant restrained bustle in that lab. Not the raucous running and constant construction work in the rest of the base, but a busy, tense atmosphere nonetheless.

The two of them wove between the rows upon rows of tables and desks. Ingwe reached the door first and held it open for her, and she nodded her thanks.

"Okay, Ingwe, goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow. Sleep well."

"You too, doctor Vahlen. You too."

The two parted ways, him heading for the scientists' sleeping quarters only a few doors down, her heading in the opposite direction looking for the phones.

* * *

"Don't even think about it, Central!"

Major Liu Yi stood in Bradford's small, stark office just off the side of the Ops centre. Bradford was sitting behind his desk looking up at the short, lightly-built Chinese trans man who commanded Sahara Base's combat aircraft division. Despite Bradford's seated position and relaxed posture, he was almost as tall as the diminutive Major Liu, and he commanded the room with an air of calm authority. His eyebrow rose in the telltale sign that Yi knew meant he was about to get angry very quickly if something more wasn't said. Yi cursed himself internally and backpedalled. "Meaning no disrespect, sir, but-" "Are you sure? That sounded pretty disrespectful to me." It was a gentle rebuke, but Yi winced. Bradford had tried to make it clear in the past week that things had to change about how the X-com chain of command had once worked. They were a small organization. Yi knew Bradford personally- not well enough to be on a first name basis, but well enough. There had been a time when the two would exchange banter and criticism during training simulations and meetings. But now the Commander was on base. That wasn't going to work anymore.

"Sorry, sir." Yi's voice was sullen, though he tried his hardest to put the appropriate level of respect into it. "All I mean is that I'm... concerned about what will happen if we engage one of these yoo-eff-ohs in combat. Especially this early, when we don't know their capabilities."

"It's flying low, within aircraft sortie range of the base, and slower than any we've seen so far. This is our first opportunity to get a look at an alien craft up close and assess their design. And you'll need to launch soon if you hope to catch it before it leaves your engagement range. Major, we don't have time to argue about this." Bradford's tone was level, flat even. His expression was mild. It was clear that if Yi left the room right now, that would be the end of it. Bradford wasn't a vengeful man, and Yi should have felt blessed to have had that outburst happen around him rather than the commander. He wanted to leave the room and scramble the other flight officers. He wanted nothing more than that. But the words kept coming.

"Still, sir-"

"Major Liu, do you know what the chain of command is?" There was iron in that voice suddenly, and Yi cursed himself for making the mild-mannered officer angry.

"Yes, sir, I do, sir." The muscles in his jaw tightened, trying to hold himself back from saying anything further. He was already in trouble, he didn't need more of it.

"And you do understand the simple fact that I'm above you in that chain?"

"Yes, sir, I do, sir."

"And that second-guessing your orders is a punishable-"

Yi couldn't stop himself. He tried. He really did. But as soon as his mouth was open, the words came pouring out. "But it's suicide, sir! We all know we're outmatched technologically, I can only assume-"

"This is not my first choice either, Major Liu! But I have my orders as well!"

Yi's mouth snapped shut. He understood now. More of the commander's work. That didn't give Yi a great amount of confidence. The last time the commander had forced Bradford's hand on something it had caused the deaths of two soldiers, and the third was still comatose in the infirmary on the other side of the base. But unfortunately, it meant he wasn't going able to sway any opinions by arguing with the messenger. He was lucky not to be relieved of duty for insubordination, he realized with a start.

Bradford looked surprised by his own outburst. Then his eyes hardened and he raised an eyebrow at Yi again. _Oh, a_ _re you still here?_

Yi straightened, planted his feet and clasped his hands behind his back in parade rest, fixing his eyes on the photograph of a younger, leaner Bradford in a US marines uniform that hung on the wall above the desk. "Sir, permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Denied. I think you've done quite enough speaking freely today." He pulled a piece of paperwork from the overflowing bin labelled "urgent" on side of his desk and pulled out a pen. "Dismissed, major," he said without looking up. Yi saluted, then turned toward the door. Bradford's cleared throat stopped him on his way out, though, and he looked back.

"Thank you for having this conversation in private," Bradford said quietly, still not looking up. "Nobody else is a witness, so I won't be forced to punish you. Don't ever do this sort of thing in front of the commander. I don't want to see a good pilot like you taken off the front lines; not now, not with everything going on." There was a pause, and then, even quieter, "Take care of yourself, Yi."

Yi stood quietly at the door for another moment, then opened it and stepped out into the Ops centre. It was still a bustle of activity, but it was actually starting to look almost operational now. The bank of huge screens in the centre of the room had been moved to the periphery and had been replaced by a large projector. It was powered down at the moment, but he'd seen the globe hovering above it when he'd come through this room before on his way to somewhere else. It had been quite impressive. On top of that, more monitoring stations had been added to the main floor of the chamber, and more green-carpeted walkways had been introduced or widened between the pits filled with personnel, allowing for efficient movement from one part of the room to another, or through it on the way to somewhere else. To Yi, it looked positively futuristic.

He took a deep breath, steadying himself, then turned on his heel and walked off towards the barracks. He'd best tell the other pilots. That wasn't something he was looking forward to, and he suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for Bradford.

* * *

AN: Hey, guys, I've come up with the full plan for this fanfic's plot, and I think I'm finally getting into the swing of it, writing more of it than I had been. If you're liking it so far and you haven't already, consider subscribing. It means a lot to me, and knowing there are people waiting is what keeps me going and makes sure I keep posting chapters. I'm trying to maintain a pace of at least a chapter a month, hopefully more along the lines of one every two weeks or so. So there shouldn't be much of a wait.

Another thing you can do to help out is to leave a review. Tell me what you want from the story, give ideas for improvements and edits you think should be made. (ZKP knows already that I'm perfectly willing to adjust and edit some things when it's pointed out to me that I'm not making things clear enough.) Toss around some ideas for arcs you want to see in the future, and I'll seriously consider them. Thanks for reading this far. I hope you stick around for the long haul.

 _-_ _Thalgrond_


	11. Helpless Part 4

AN: This chapter contains a single very descriptive and violent verb. If you are squeamish, read with caution.

 _The early days of the war were absolute hell. I was fighting in Tunisia before the aliens arrived. I thought I knew carnage and confusion, but this... out of all those early skirmishes, though, I can't come up with a bigger disaster than the very first. Operation Cryptic Summer. There were some with higher losses, sure but that was the only one where we were totally unprepared. The panic there was unequalled anytime later in the war. We still didn't know what we were dealing with, and when the Algerian army got involved... well, they call it the Amsel Gorge massacre for a reason._

* * *

The Sahara desert, Yi reflected, was a lot bigger than it looked on a map.

He and his wingman, Maha Ghoshal, had been tailing this UFO for the better part of an hour, and in that time they had never once left the bounds of the Sahara. The rocky landscape whipped past under him at speeds of 3000 kilometres per hour, interspersed with areas of sand that raced by so quickly that the dunes blurred into streaks of gold and brown. He could see the target occasionally, little flashes of reflected sunlight way up ahead. He couldn't make out its shape. It was staying just out of the range at which he might have been able to do that, and whatever stealth composites these things had coating their skin, they were doing far too good a job of masking its shape, as far as Yi was concerned.

"It's kiting us," observed Ghoshal over the radio. "Look at that. It just reduced speed again. It's holding station on us."

"Why?" Yi muttered the question under his breath. His radio picked it up, but it was clear that he wasn't actually looking for an answer, so Ghoshal didn't offer one. He glared at the infuriating little spacecraft, then down at his fuel gauge, the needle of it sitting directly on the "40%" mark. _Testing us? Do they not know the capabilities of these interceptors?_ It was only a guess, but it was the best he had. He shook his head in frustration and bit out the words "Hurricane one to Central. Come in, central."

"Central here. Go ahead, Hurricane One." The reply was crackly and had more of a delay than usual. Without the satellites, these communications were having to be relayed via landlines from communications outposts on the desert itself. Yi found himself glancing downward, trying to spot the antenna he knew was down there somewhere, but couldn't spot it. "Permission to reduce speed, sir." Another pause. A crackly reply. "Explain, Major." "Sir. We believe this yoo-eff-oh is deliberately kiting us. We've seen how fast they can go if they want to." "So it's testing you? Trying to find out your maximum range and fuel capacity?" "That's my theory, sir. I believe Airman Ghoshal agrees with me on this." Ghoshal jumped in with a quick "Affirmative, sir. I agree with the Major's assessment."

There was another pause, longer this time. Not just communications delay. Bradford was thinking.

"I'll check with the commander," he said at last. "Give me a moment."

Another pause. Yi felt the vibration of the powerful aerospike engines reverberating through his seat. The silence stretched out, leaving his mind to become entirely focused on that roar. His hands darted over the controls automatically. He was in the zone. He no longer had to even think about that, and barely noticed it. _Tap, tap, twiddle._ The engine's roar vibrated through the aileron controls, up his arm, tickling his elbow.

"Acknowledged, Major." The reply was immersed in a burst of static, making Yi jump. "Re-u-ce thr-le to one th-r-... er..." "Central, you're breaking up." A rush of static was the only reply. "Central? Central, please repeat." Static. "Damn," Ghoshal commented quietly. "Did you hear any of what he said?" Yi nodded, then, realizing Ghoshal couldn't see him, added "Yes. I made out some of it. It sounded like he was ordering us to reduce throttle." "By how much?" "A third, I think. That makes sense. That way it looks like we're concerned about fuel, but still trying at least a little bit to maintain visual contact." "On your order, Major." "Alright. One-third power on my mark." He moved his hand over the appropriate controls. "Mark!"

Hurricanes One and Two decelerated in almost perfect unison. Ghoshal hit a thermal, and had to adjust slightly, bringing him a bit lower and a bit further forward than he had been before, but otherwise the manoeuvre was executed perfectly. The two interceptors dropped from 3000 kilometres an hour to "only" 2000 in a minute and a half, before their speed stabilized, now moving far slower than the object they were supposedly chasing.

"Now we see what he does." Yi's voice had a predatory edge to it; a wolf feeling very pleased with itself for having outwitted a bear. His eyes stared hungrily at the object, glancing down at his radar display every time he heard the tiny "blip" of its beam passing over the target. _Approximate target speed: 3010 km/h. 3014. 3012. 3005..._

Seconds passed. The UFO's speed was still hovering around 3000 It was gaining distance. Yi started to wonder whether he had made a mistake.

 _3001\. 3004. 3008._

He had. He'd lost a target that he actually had a chance of catching. It was only 30 kilometres away when he had reduced throttle, but now it was gaining distance, 200 metres every second. It would be out of visual range soon, and radar range shortly after that. And without communications to the base or access to its more powerful radar arrays, he would lose it. Damn. Maybe Bradford hadn't given the order to reduce throttle. Maybe-

 _3004\. 3006. 2970._

Wait. Was that...

 _2934\. 2840. 2711._

It was! It was reducing speed!

 _2614\. 2568._

...And doing it really, _really_ quickly, too...

...And turning...

"Central in the blind, this is Hurricane One. Hostile is coming about and reducing speed. Entering missile engagement envelope in twenty seconds. Ghoshal, hold your throttle. Wait until it gets closer, then we'll throttle back up to full and engage afterburners. Let's surprise the bastards."

"Yes, sir. Holding throttle."

The two aircraft screamed across the desert towards the rapidly turning alien spaceship. With surprising clarity, Yi's mind registered the fact that it was turning at a rate that must have easily brought it into the 20 to 30g range, if not more. He didn't have time to do the calculations right now. The intercept estimate in the corner of his helmet display kept ticking down at an alarming rate. He breathed out; long, slow, steady; and his hand came to rest on the throttle controls again.

22 kilometres. The range estimate numbers dropped like a stone, racing towards point blank range. They were already easily within their missile envelope, but Yi held fire. He had no doubt that whatever that thing was capable of, it would be more than enough to shoot down or evade whatever he could throw at it from this range. He would need the element of surprise, to give the pilots of the craft as little time as possible to react.

16 kilometres. He could make out the shape of the craft now. It was circular, almost like one of those old black and white photographs of the silver streaks flying through the sky. Hoaxes? He'd been so sure of that. Now he wasn't certain.

14 kilometres. Why hadn't it fired yet? It was clearly high-tech. Engagement ranges increased as tech level got higher. That was the trend. That had always _been_ the trend! What were the aliens doing?

12 kilometres. 11. 10. "Mark!" As he said the word, his hand on the throttle controls thrust forward, and the roar of his engines almost drowned out his voice as the afterburners engaged and he was thrown back into his seat's embrace, feeling for that one moment as if he weighed five times as much as he really did. A glance at his radar told him Ghoshal had done the same and was struggling to keep station on Yi's tail. "Hurricane two, attack run, breaking left. Deploy half munitions at 5 kilometres." That was dangerously close, even against a human aircraft, but there was no time to second-guess himself. He heard the affirmative reply, watched the range drop. Ghoshal broke left, Yi went right. 7 kilometres. 6. 5. His thumbs squeezed down twice in quick succession, and four of his eight air-to-air missiles dropped from the wings and roared off towards the target at hypersonic speeds.

Yi had no time to watch them. He pulled left, breaking off his attack run, black appearing around the edges of his vision and white spots swimming across his eyes as his heart struggled to pump blood to his head against a downward force of just over 7 gees.

* * *

Unnoticed for the moment by Yi, those four missiles roared in towards the target, joined by four more from Ghoshal's rails. The eight missiles screamed in towards the target at a speed of over 5000 kilometres an hour, still accelerating.

They were radar guided. Three were thrown off by the stealth systems onboard the spacecraft. Two simply missed as the ship turned edge-on just before impact in an expertly-timed evasive manoeuvre. The remaining three slammed home, their kinetic energy alone enough to kill most human fighters, and their high explosive warheads just adding insult to injury. The alien spacecraft bucked. Three large, blackened pits appeared on its side. One penetrated all the way through its outer skin, forming a small hull breach clear through to one of the crew compartments.

But it kept flying.

* * *

"I read two hits," said Yi, his voice tense. "You?" "One more on my end," Ghoshal replied.

"You think that did it?"

"I don't know, Major. I-"

 ** _BLAM!_**

The flash erupted from somewhere just ahead of Yi's interceptor, searing his retinas and blinding him, just for a moment, even through the tinted window of the aircraft and the reflective glass of his helmet's visor. The sound of it hit him a moment later as his supersonic aircraft roared through the shockwave of the weapon blast. He sent his plane into a roll, instinctively, blinking to clear the stars from his vision. "Holy shit! No, I think it's safe to say that our missiles weren't enough," commented Ghoshal. "Shut it!" Yi yawed wildly, trying to get the enemy craft back into his field of vision. A crackle of static filled his ears, and Bradford's distorted voice came through. "-peat, we've just seen a huge energy spike! Hurricane one, report!" "Taking fire! We are at CQB! Ghoshal, give me a rundown of the damage!"

"Alien craft is still flying. At least two missile hits confirmed. I see its engines. They look exposed. Permission to engage?" The crackling voice came again. "Negative. Hurricanes: withdraw. Return to base." Ghoshal replied immediately. "Yes, sir! Withdrawing!" Yi finally managed to get the alien craft back into his field of vision. There was something on the top of it. Something rotating. A turreted gun? If so... he followed its trajectory with his eyes, and they widened in alarm. "Ghoshal! Evasive manoeuvres!"

 _ **BLAM!**_

* * *

Airman Maha Ghoshal had been one of the most promising young pilots in the Indian Air Force before his transfer to X-com. He'd been sent there after his failure to follow orders resulted in the death of a soldier on the ground. However, that same incident had resulted in twenty-nine civilians surviving a hostage situation that they almost certainly would otherwise have died in. His superiors weren't willing to risk the PR nightmare of removing him from the service after that, but at the same time, they hadn't wanted to deal with him still being _on_ the force. So, like so many other embarrassments and problem personnel, he was sent to Sahara Base as a "volunteer". Still, he wasn't sent there for being incompetent. He was a good pilot.

In fact, he was one of the most skilled pilots to have ever flown in a Raven Mark 1. In some ways, he was better than Yi himself. As soon as he heard the word "Evasive", he jolted the controls to the right, then to the left. He cut throttle entirely. He went into an aileron roll, and simultaneously twitched the elevators to send him into a controlled tailspin. He could get out of the spin and pull up before he hit the desert. He was confident of that. These Ravens had a lot of power behind them.

He did everything right.

It was almost enough.

The stream of plasma cleaved through Hurricane Two's left wing, shattering the control surfaces and tracing a line of melted metal across the bottom of the craft. Then the weapon was done firing, and it was over. Just like that. The interceptor's airframe came apart like wet tissue paper, and Maha Ghoshal was liquefied as the fuel tank exploded less than two feet behind his head.

* * *

Yi screamed in rage and disbelief as his friend's plane turned into a fireball and a shower of debris right before his eyes. Even Bradford sounded shaken, almost shouting "Yi, get out of there! Yi! Go! Full throttle! Head for-" He punched the comms button on the side of his helmet, muting Central's voice. The shock faded as quickly as it had come, blown out like a candle. It was replaced by a raging furnace. Yi sent his interceptor into a hard turn, murder in his eyes.

In its movements to line up the shot that had killed Ghoshal, the alien had presented its engines to Yi. That was a mistake. One he would make them pay dearly for. He watched the range counter drop again, seeing the UFO try in vain to turn in time to face him. A savage grin came to his face. He watched the kilometres count down.

6\. 5. 4.

His thumbs moved to the buttons on his twin joysticks.

3\. 2. 1. The meters raced by. He tapped the buttons twice, then pushed the joysticks forward, roaring past under the larger frame of the spacecraft just meters from its hull, just as the four missiles in his second barrage arrived right alongside him.

This time none of them missed. At that range, there was no way any of them _could._ Even the ones without a radar lock blundered into the UFO's engine block, and the airborne behemoth staggered, then began to fall. It plummeted away beneath Yi, trailing smoke and ugly red flames, its spine-mounted weapon trying and failing to lock on to Yi's rapidly retreating interceptor. Another shot roared past, far behind his aircraft's tail, and he left the shockwave in his wake, not even hearing it this time. And before a fourth could follow, the spacecraft slammed into the dry, rocky landscape below, ploughing up a plume of dirt, sand and broken chips of stone.


	12. Helpless Part 5

Bradford opened the door to the commander's office with a glower on his face, starting to snap to attention before he was even fully through the door. "Sir, permission to-"

"I want no insubordination from you on this, Bradford," snapped the commander, cutting him off. "I've noticed how rampant that problem is in the short time I've been here, and I want you to know it stops here. I don't know what you were told when you were moved out to Sahara Base, but this is a military installation, and there are regulations for a reason."

Bradford was taken aback. He stood dumbfounded in the doorway for a moment, hand still raised in salute, forgotten. "Yes, sir," he said finally, his rant cut off before it could even begin.

"Step inside, Bradford. Have a seat. And close the door. This base is full of ears and hidden corners." The commander's voice was no longer nearly so... flaying. There was still an edge to it, but Bradford was beginning to think it always sounded like that. "Yes, sir," he said again and followed the order. The door closed with a quiet _clunk_ , and he seated himself in the single hard chair that was opposite the commander in the stark, bare-walled office he had claimed on arrival. A pile of cardboard boxes in the corner no doubt held all the decorations and ornaments he would later bedeck the office in. For now, it was all grey walls and steel floor grating. With things so chaotic, no doubt the commander hadn't had a chance to unpack yet.

The older man turned briefly to the computer monitor on his desk, squinting at whatever it was displaying, then typed a few words on the keyboard, most likely finishing up the thing he had already been doing before the interruption. Bradford sat patiently across from him, his eyes locked on a point on the wall just behind the commander's head. "Bradford, I don't want anything I'm about to say to leave this office. Do you understand me?" "Yes, sir." "Good. Have a drink." A bottle of something amber, with torn paper where its label had once been, was produced from a desk drawer. As the commander placed it on the desk, he pointed with his other hand to the pile of boxes in the corner. "Big grey box, labelled 'Desk'. The glasses are right at the top of the box. Find them." Bradford got up mutely and began sorting through the boxes until he found the one he was looking for. This was strange. A total shift in how the commander had been treating him thus far. Bradford hoped he wasn't misreading the situation.

"I found them, sir," he said, at last, straightening with two plain, solid, utilitarian glasses in his hands.

"Good. On the desk. I refuse to pour into a glass that is being held. And sit back down."

A silence stretched out for a few moments, only broken by the sound of the amber liquid swirling into the glasses.

"Sir, if I may-"

"Let me talk first. Here. Drink." A glass was thrust at Bradford, who took it gingerly, careful not to touch the commander's fingers. This man was volatile. Bradford would hate to set him off again.

The commander picked up his own glass, with Bradford waiting politely, his own cupped against his lap. The commander raised his glass, thought for a fraction of a second, then said simply "Humanity."

Bradford muttered the word, then raised his glass to his lips. It burned. The commander liked some hard stuff, apparently. Harder than Bradford did. But it would be a shame to be rude when his superior was clearly trying to offer a peace deal of some sort. The commander raised the glass to his lips again, and Bradford followed suit, mirroring his motions precisely. It felt like what he imagined a lion tamer must feel like in a cage, with only a chair between himself and a creature that could easily tear him apart. For Bradford, it was actually a desk, but the metaphor seemed apt in his mind.

"That was a good speech you gave me, Bradford," the commander said suddenly, breaking the silence a few sips later. "You know your history, and you're smart to recognize the parallels between the native Americans' plight and our own."

"Thank you, sir. It's an easy comparison to make, don't you think?"

"Well, we seem to be doing well enough so far."

"Sir, all due respect, that's judging by two combat engagements where we've outnumbered our foes two to one, and they've _still_ inflicted at least a 50% casualty rate on us both times. And there's no guarantee that there aren't more aliens in Berlin. In the air, on the ground, they outmatch us, and they're clearly still not using their full ability for some reason. We don't even know-"

"Bradford, that isn't what I brought you in to talk about. It was an icebreaker. Be quiet, and stop second-guessing your superior."

"Sir."

Another long pause. There must have been a clock in one of those boxes. The ticking stood out to Bradford. He resisted the urge to awkwardly clear his throat, and instead, he raised his glass to his lips again. The commander did not.

"Bradford, there can't be two commanders on base." It was a blunt statement. Matter-of-fact. Almost monotone. And the commander's eyes were hard and cold when he said it.

"I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, sir."

"Bullshit, Central. You and I both know perfectly well that you were coming here to object to my insistence on deploying X-com personnel to the crash site."

A pause. _Tick, tick, tick, tick_ went the hidden clock.

"A fair point," admitted Bradford. "I'm sorry, sir. I don't mean to be insubordinate."

"Well, intentional or not, that is how you come off, and other people at Sahara Base know you, so they're bound to notice and follow suit. Hell, maybe they already have and I've just been too busy to notice." Sip. _Tick, tick, tick._ The commander swirled his liquor around and said to the bottom of the glass "Bradford. This needs to stop. I understand that you're used to running this operation as a training ground slash playground for disgraced soldiers. That will no longer fly. This is a military operation, and as of a week ago we are in a wartime situation."

"I understand that, sir. I think it's irresponsible-"

"I am in command of this base, Bradford! And don't you forget it! The council has seen fit to put _me_ in charge of all operations!" The commander was on his feet now, towering over Bradford. Of the two men, Bradford was actually considerably taller, but right now he was seated and the commander was using every trick in the book to intimidate. He spoke now with cold, rapid fury, causing Bradford to unconsciously shrink backward into his seat ever so slightly: "I want to make one thing perfectly clear, Bradford: when I give you or any other member of the staff of this base a direct order, it is not the beginning of a conversation. It is not an opportunity for you to challenge my authority. It is not a time for you to be a smartass. And it is most certainly not the time to storm into my office, intending to demand that I change my ruling. I do not change my rulings, mister Bradford. If you'd read my file, you'd know that already. Arguing will do no good. My decision is made. Follow through on it, and make it work."

 _Tick, tick, tick, tick..._ "Understood, sir. Permission to return to duty?"

 _Tick, tick, tick._ "Granted. Central, I want boots on the ground at the crash zone within five hours. Take care of the details. Contact anyone you need to, but I also want reports every hour." A moment passed. Bradford didn't move, expecting something further. The commander stared at him, one eyebrow raised. "Well? Time's a-wasting! Go!" He flicked his hand dismissively and turned his attention back to his computer.

Bradford nodded, stood, finished the dregs of his glass, then turned on his heel and strode out of the office.

* * *

Vahlen tucked herself into the dim alcove, pressing her back against the steel wall and taking the phone off its hook. These alcoves, which were sprinkled around the base here and there, were essentially nuclear-hardened phone booths. She dialled Hanna's cell number, put the phone to her ear, and waited.

The first two times, she got a message saying that the signal couldn't get through. The third gave her a busy tone. Frustrated, she dialled a fourth time.

This time, the phone rang. She caught her breath. It worked! It hadn't worked before, not anytime in the past week! It rang again; then a third time. Vahlen tapped her foot anxiously. Halfway through the sixth ring, the phone went silent for a moment, then a recorded female voice said in German: "Hey, this is Hanna's cell. I'm alive. We made it out of Berlin alright. I'm at a refugee camp in West Germany. I'm really sorry for not being able to come to the phone right now, but I promise I'm okay. Leave a message, I'll-" Vahlen slammed the receiver down with a groan of frustration. She had no idea how long this window of availability was going to last, but it wouldn't be long, she was certain. She wasn't the only one who was trying to get in touch with people. And of _course,_ Hanna had chosen _this_ moment of all times to walk away from her phone...

Lily. There was still Lily.

She picked up the receiver, started to dial, forgot a digit, put it down again, and fumbled in her pocket for the little slip of paper she had written the number on. She looked it over quickly, picked up again, and dialled as fast as her fingers could move (remarkably fast since she had dexterity born of years of surgical training). Vahlen prayed very rarely, but she found herself saying a short, embarrassed little prayer to whatever deity oversaw fiberoptic cables. It started ringing, and she let out a sigh of relief. She hadn't missed her window. "Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up..." she muttered in German, pacing as best she could in the tiny alcove.

Lily picked up on the fifth ring. "Hello?" Her voice sounded confused and surprised. It occurred to Vahlen that she had probably also just about given up on the whole phone idea.

Vahlen stopped pacing and responded in English. "Hey, Lily. It's Moira." She paused for a moment. "Moira Vahlen. Hanna's scientist friend."

"Yeah. Party. The night this all started. I remember you. Are you okay?"

"I... mostly. Physically, at least. A bit tired. X-com is working me for all I'm worth, but that's to be expected."

"Yeah. Hey, how did you get through? Did X-com put you in contact with me?"

"No. Just luck."

"Oh. So what occasions the call? Why were you trying?"

"It's... a daily thing for me," Vahlen admitted. "I've been trying at this time every day to reach Hanna, and... uh... where is she? She didn't answer her phone when I finally got through to her."

"Oh... I guess you wouldn't know. Hanna just got married today."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She found her fiance in the camp, tracked down a priest, and got it done. Very small ceremony. Basically just the bridesmaids and a few others from the bachelorette party."

"Oh."

There was a moment of silence. Lily broke it before it could start to drag out. "She figured it would be best to just get it done now. Since everything's so up in the air right now, and everybody's been... since we're not sure how things are going to turn out. There are actually a lot of weddings going on. They're all small affairs. I literally just walk past them sometimes. A priest with a few people in front of him and a crowd of whatever friends and family they've managed to find. Hell, some of them are marrying people they only met a week ago. People are scared. I think they're looking for any chance at comfort they can get."

"Yeah."

"Things are... not good here. The camp is over-crowded, under-supplied. There are eight others just like it. We've in number five, and we have enough supplies flowing in for... maybe three of the nine camps. Everyone else is running on whatever reserves they can dredge up and the generosity of the locals. But both of those are going to run out soon, and nobody seems sure of where else to move us. Nobody was... No one was prepared for this."

"Yeah. Well, how could we have been? It makes no goddamn sense. Why would they make their first contact with us by making a light, mostly nonlethal attack against a city, and then just sitting back in orbit and letting us recover? It literally makes no sense."

"Well..."

Lily trailed off, leaving Vahlen to voice what both of them were thinking: "There's no guarantee they've finished with Germany yet. They might have something up their sleeves. Some move they haven't made yet."

"We should stop clogging up the lines of communication, to give other people a chance to call their families. There are people who need it more than us, and since the satellites went down it's all being handled by cables, which have very limited-"

"Wait. Satellites?"

"Yes. The aliens have gained uncontested control of Earth orbit. They've been playing havoc with every satellite they can get their hands on. It was to be expected."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess... Call me again when things settle down a bit more, okay? Next time you think you can get through."

"Okay. Tell Hanna I called. And, uh, wish her luck on her honeymoon, whatever that means in your current situation."

"Will do. Bye, Moira. Good luck saving the world."

Vahlen smiled. "Thanks. Goodbye, for now, Lily. It was nice talking to you again, even if the situation is..."

"Less than perfect?"

"Yes." There was one more brief pause, then Vahlen shook her head and chuckled. "Okay. Goodbye. For real this time."

* * *

Renaldo sat bolt upright in his chair beside the hospital bed as the alarm started blaring. He had fallen asleep again. It was getting to be a bad habit. The alarm was followed by a short, snappy order being spoken over the PA: "All combat personnel, report to the briefing room. Repeat: all combat personnel, report to the briefing room." The same message was repeated in Mandarin, then in Arabic, then Hindi, then back to English.

Renaldo stood slowly from the chair, arching his back and wincing at the noises it made, then looked down at the unconscious woman in the bed in front of him, her dark hair splayed out around her bandaged head. She was looking healthier now than she had, no longer on death's door, her skin looking less pale, some of the bandages coming off, but she still hadn't moved. Not in a week, not since arriving...

As the alarm continued to blare, she shifted slightly, and he felt his breath catch. Her left arm struggled free of the sheets, flopped out on the bed beside her, a mass of bandages, barely-healed burns and fresh scar tissue. She grunted and her face screwed up into a familiar scowl. Was she... waking up?

"...All combat personnel, report to the briefing room..."

"Yasmeen? Yasmeen, can you hear me?"

Her eyes squeezed tighter shut, and a dry rasp escaped her throat. Her head rolled to the side, trying to block out the noise of the alarm and the PA announcement. He heard her mutter something in Arabic, but he didn't know enough of the language to understand, and she spoke too quietly to hear clearly anyway. The beeps coming from the heart rate monitor beside her bed became quicker as she started to thrash her head back and forth, still muttering.

"Yasmeen?" He bent down beside the bed, reaching for her left hand, then thinking better of it and taking the undamaged right one instead. "Yasmeen!"

The PA shut off, leaving him in sudden silence with his wounded squad mate. She muttered something further, but the sound died on her lips and after a few words it just became a drawn out moan. Her movements were slowing, becoming smaller and more sluggish. Her eyes squeezed shut one more time, and her hand moved in his, grasping his fingertips for just a moment before letting go. The beeps became slow, regular. A sound he had heard a lot in the past week. He continued to stare at her for a moment longer, then tried to release her hand. She grasped tighter.

"Yasmeen... Yasmeen, I have to go." Her fingers clenched even tighter as he tried gently to work his hand free of her grasp. He touched her fingers with his other hand and slowly, gently, pried them loose and slipped his fingers out from her vice-like grip. He laid her arm gently back down on the bed beside her and adjusted her sheets. "I really do have to go. I'm sorry. But, you know... Earth needs me, and all that. I'll be careful, captain, I promise. I'll come back to you, and I'll be right here for you when you're ready to wake up." He smiled down at her, but somewhere in a corner of his mind, a little voice was telling him: _don't make promises you can't keep._


	13. Sink or Swim Part 1

There were far more troops in the briefing room than there had been last time the troops had gathered there. It was still far from a full house – of the 800 seats, only about 50 seats were occupied – but Renaldo knew there were more troops coming in from all over the world, arriving every day, often with no more than a few hours' warning, being driven in from the airport or flown in by helicopter straight to the base. For now, though, they would have to fight with what they had.

He edged along the third row of seats, stepping over the legs of a new arrival chatting with his newly formed squad, then sat down in the middle of the row and sank into the back of his seat. His stomach felt like it had simply vanished. It didn't feel empty, or full of butterflies. It was simply gone. It always got like that when the realization hit him that he might not be alive in a few hours. He glanced around the room, taking in the dozen or so small squads scattered in clumps around the room. New squads. People who hadn't trained with each other at all. They might all have been good soldiers now that they were being hired due to their combat ability rather than their political status, but Renaldo sincerely hoped none of them would be sent into the field until they had a chance to train together at least a little bit.

The door at the left side of the room opened and Commander Adams strode into the room and towards the podium. Renaldo was on his feet before anyone else, and he reflexively shouted out "Commander on deck!" There was a low rumble of creaking seats and rustling clothing as fifty soldiers leapt to their feet and snapped to attention.

The commander stepped up to the podium, tapped a sheaf of papers on the stand in front of him, and produced a pair of reading glasses. "At ease," he said into the microphone, putting on his glasses and not looking up at the gathered troops. In perfect unison with the rest of the room, Renaldo's right foot stepped out and his hand lowered, settling into parade rest. The commander left them like that for a moment, checking over his papers one last time, before placing them on the podium in front of him and leaning into the mic. "Have a seat, ladies and gents. We're in a bit of a hurry here."

There was another rustling and creaking as people settled back into their chairs. When the room fell quiet again after a few moments, the commander cleared his throat, then barked into the silence "Right. Two hours ago, Hurricane 1 successfully shot down an alien yoo-eff-oh over western Algeria. What's more, this spacecraft is within flight range of the base, not just for the Skyranger, but for traditional helicopter designs as well. The Algerian government has contacted me saying they already have a force on the move towards the downed spacecraft for a salvage operation, and requesting our support. As such, we and the Algerians are launching a joint assault against the crash site."

He shuffled the papers on the podium.

"We'll be deploying seven squads: Beta through Eta, and the as-yet incomplete Iota, supported by reassigned soldiers from the rest of the force. Betas, you will be deploying on the Skyranger as our initial recon team. We've been running flybys on the crash site, and we are detecting movement in and around the wreck, so you are to keep your distance. Feed us intel, tell us where safe landing zones are. The rest will be following them in on helicopters, and will be dropped off a safe distance away from the spacecraft. We've seen what their weapons can do, I don't want to risk our helicopters. Two squads to the helicopter, each two squads will form a team under the command of the most senior officer of their eight members. Teams will keep together after landing, and we will coordinate movements from here. You will have close air support waiting for you just over the horizon. It will be able to perform an airstrike on any designated target within four minutes of the order being given. We want to be ready for anything on this mission. We aren't sure what we'll find down there. Once you arrive, your main job will be to assist the Algerian convoy as it arrives in the area. You will be primarily operating in a reconnaissance role. Let them do all the heavy lifting."

Renaldo sighed inwardly. The commander was deploying the new squads. Of course he was. And Renaldo wasn't going with them, so there wasn't even anything he could do to help keep them safe. He quickly did the math in his head. Four to the squad, seven squads. They were deploying 28 soldiers. Half of the current on-base combat personnel.

"Mister Garcia."

Renaldo sat bolt upright in his chair and met the commander's eyes. Had he done something wrong? Too much time in the infirmary? Too distracted?

"Iota squad is two squad members short and lacks experienced soldiers. Considering the current state of Alpha, you will be deploying with Iota as their acting lieutenant. Private Ngomi Maiga will accompany you to round out the team."

Renaldo's jaw clenched. He was doing it again. Dammit, the commander was doing it again. Reassigning soldiers, throwing together squads with no warning and no training... had this man ever fought on the front lines? Somehow, Renaldo doubted it. He nodded, saluted, said "thank you, sir" through numb lips, and sat stock still as the commander finished:

"Teams are assigned as follows: Gamma and Delta will be on team one, under the command of captain Jeff Bridger; Epsilon and Zeta, team two, under captain Catalina Imbruga; Eta and Iota, team three, under acting leiutennant Renaldo Garcia. Go suit up and get on board your respective helicopters. They are waiting for you in the main hangar. Dismissed."

The commander stepped down from the podium, and fifty men and women got to their feet. Half returned to the main aisle and began to filter out through the doors at the back. Renaldo ignored them, and followed the other half, weaving their way through the rows of seats towards the door on the right side of the room.

The armory was a large but low-ceilinged room, lit by stark fluorescent tubes, all in concrete and steel. It smelled of rubber and chemical cleaning supplies. A maze of lockers took up one side of the room, and the other wall was lined with racks stocked with small arms of all sorts, from shelves of boxes containing pistols and ammo, all the way up to a stack of crates against one wall full of rocket launchers. As with the rest of the base, it was equipped to handle a full battalion of troops. Currently, it only contained about a platoon's worth.

Renaldo turned and began making his way through the rows of lockers. He found his, twiddled with the heavy combination lock, heard the click, and wrenched it open, fuming as he pulled out his jumpsuit and armor.

"Lieutenant Garcia. Sir."

He turned around and found himself facing seven complete strangers, all standing at parade rest in a neat line. The woman who had spoken was in the centre, directly in front of him. She was actually taller than him – northern European, by the looks of her: blonde, close-cropped hair, a smattering of freckles across her cheeks, piercing blue eyes. Judging by her pallor and the sunburn across her nose, she had only arrived in Africa very recently. "Team three, reporting, sir. Corporal Hera Ingibergsdottir, Eta squad, at your service." She spoke in a heavy accent, but not so thick as to be difficult for Renaldo to understand. In the heat of battle, though, he suspected it might get thicker, and he wished he had time to drill with her so he could get used to it... well. Couldn't be helped.

The six others were already in their green jumpsuits, but none had their armour on yet. Eta squad, standing to the corporal's left, consisted entirely of Chinese soldiers with the exception of the corporal herself. Iota, meanwhile, was made up of two white men and a tall, thin black woman. She was standing on the end, and Renaldo could only assume that this was private Ngomi Maiga, the one who had been assigned to the squad at the same time he had. Her expression was troubled. He realized that morale might very well be a problem on this mission.

"Thank you, corporal," he said. She nodded, not budging from her parade rest stance. "Alright, everyone: ready to go kick these xeno bastards back into space?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" replied all seven. They may have been rookies in the X-com program, but all of them were trained and experienced soldiers in their own right.

Renaldo thought for half a moment. Every time the Alphas were heading out into the field for an exercise, Yasmeen always ran through an inventory of essentials. It was part of their pre-mission routine, a spot of calm amidst the worrying and bustling. Not only did it help ensure they never came up short on anything in the field, it always helped the Alphas with the jitters when they had something specific like that to focus on. He had never done this before, so he hoped that just imitating Yasmeen would be enough. "Then we'd better make sure we have our ass-kicking boots, shouldn't we?" He saw private Ngomi crack as smile. Good. "Alright. Everyone unpack almost all the food rations from your packs; leave in only what you need to avoid becoming distracted by hunger for a single afternoon, and then go see the requisitions officer. Make sure you pack desert camo nets, dark sunglasses, and lots and lots of water; at least one-and-a-half litres per person. Discuss amongst yourselves, and make sure that each squad has at least two medpacks, and when you've distributed them amongst yourselves, make sure I know where they are. With the weapons these things use, a near miss will still need medical attention. We'll have close air support, so make sure you each pack a flare and a smoke grenade to mark targets. Ensure your ammo packs are full, and clean your rifles; I'll be inspecting them as we get on the helicopter, and I want their mechanisms to _gleam_. Are any of you cleared by X-com for use of heavy weapons?"

An Asian man from Eta squad stepped forward. "Sir, I am sir!" He looked it. He may not have been an especially large man, but he looked stocky and compact, heavily muscled under his jumpsuit, and with a crew cut that reminded Renaldo painfully of Henry Hunter.

"Name and rank?"

"Private first class Hae Min-Chul, sir."

"Alright, private. You stay with me. Everyone else: dismissed!"

The six other soldiers dispersed into the maze of lockers. The other two members of Eta squad followed corporal Hera towards the requisitions office, leaving private Hae standing unmoving, still in parade rest. Renaldo slung his jumpsuit over his shoulder, hefted his ballistic vest in his other hand, and started walking towards the change rooms. "Walk with me." The private broke his stance and followed along in Renaldo's wake.

"What weapons are you cleared to use, private?"

"Sir, Squad Automatic Weapons and rocket launchers, sir!"

"Both useful," he replied, nodding thoughtfully. They had reached the line of change rooms – really more like stalls, with doors that only covered Renaldo from shins to neck. He thrust his armor at the private's chest, who took it and tucked it under his arm. Renaldo gave him a short smile, then stepped into the stall and shut the door, before beginning to strip out of his uniform.

"A SAW will only slow us down on this mission. We won't be fighting in urban environments, and suppressing fire will be handled using assault rifles. No corridors to set up kill zones in, no brick walls that will need dismantling. So go get yourself a launcher and some rockets, but trade out the SAW for a battle rifle." He pulled his jumpsuit off its hangar and began slipping it on. "And I can't emphasize this enough, private: make sure you have enough water. We're fighting in the middle of the bloody Sahara. If it's a choice between packing more water or packing an extra rocket, take the water."

"Yes, sir."

Renaldo stuck his hand over the door. "Armour." He felt the rough fabric against his fingers, then the full weight of the Kevlar and ceramics that made up the ballistic vest. "Thank you, private. Go get yourself ready. We'll meet up at the helicopter in fifteen."

"Yes, sir." He heard the sound of shoes snapping together as the private came to attention, then the click of his heels on the hard concrete floor retreated away from the changing room and faded into silence, leaving him with only the sounds of the soldier in the next changing room over struggling with their zipper.

* * *

"Central," the commander said with a respectful nod, his shoes coming together with a sharp click as he came to a stop beside Bradford. The two looked up at the newly installed holographic globe, a projection fifteen feet across hovering in the middle of the room. "Very impressive," he commented.

"Yes. It turns out that now that we've got some funding we can actually do things. Who would have thought?"

The commander stood in silence for a moment. He raised a cup of coffee to his lips and took a long sip.

"Are they ready for deployment?"

"I think so, sir. As ready as they can be at present."

The commander lowered his voice. "Your objection has been noted, Central."

"I didn't say anything, sir," Bradford replied, matching his volume and glancing over towards an ensign sitting at a workstation nearby. He didn't want to even hint at the disagreement in the upper ranks within earshot of his subordinates. Confusion over the chain of command was never a good thing in a wartime situation.

"Make sure it stays that way, central." There was a pause. Bradford and the commander were both staring up at the little red blip displayed on the globe in western Algeria, just a few hundred kilometers from the ping that represented the base. Then, in a louder voice, without looking at Bradford the commander spoke: "Deploy the troops, Central. Let's make sure the Algerians have a welcoming party ready for them by the time they reach the crash site."


	14. Sink or Swim Part 2

_AN: Yes, I'm aware of how long it's been since I posted a chapter of this. No excuse. I just hope you'll enjoy the chapter now that I've made it._

 _No aliens besides Sectoids yet. We'll be seeing others before too long, though._

 _One more thing: you know how, in the description, it says "loosely based"? Yeah, this chapter is looser than most. For one thing, no map or battle in the game is ever this big. But I will say, I kept one important aspect of the game: new soldiers, rookies to the X-com program can't hit the broad side of a barn._

 _Again, enjoy. The next chapter won't take nearly as long as this one I promise._

* * *

 **11:44 AM, a helicopter over Central Algeria, over Ouargla province**

The monotonous whir of rotors blended gradually into the background of Renaldo's mind as the cluster of helicopters skimmed across the endless dunes and rock of the Algerian Sahara. Outside the window, far below, their shadows flitted over the landscape like insects, growing and shrinking as they ran up and down the slopes of the huge orange dunes they were currently passing over.

The cramped interior was dreadfully quiet besides the sound of the engines and the whistling of the wind. The members of Eta and Iota squads, decked out in headsets to nullify the noise of the helicopter and allow for conversation, fidgeted in silence with their gear, glanced around at one another, or simply sat staring straight ahead. One of Iota's men held a crucifix between his clasped hands, his head bowed and the silver chain hanging down as he fervently prayed. One of the Asian men from Eta – a Tibetan man who had introduced himself as Kelsang (with no last name) when they had gone over names earlier in the flight – had his eyes closed, head leaning against the wall, apparently relaxed, though Renaldo knew better. He had already been a soldier when X-com picked him up, and he had lived that life long enough to be able to spot pre-mission jitters.

He had become gradually aware of something else during the flight: they all kept looking at him. Not the way a soldier looked at a superior officer, but sidelong, like they found him intimidating, even with a bit of awe. Their eyes darted away when he caught them looking. To be honest, it was making him nervous.

It was when he caught Hera doing it that his curiosity overtook him. She shut her eyes as soon as he looked at her, but opened them again soon enough. When she did, he tapped the side of his headset and held up three fingers. She nodded and both switched over to channel three on their respective headsets.

"Check, check, anybody else on this channel?" asked Renaldo.

After a moment of silence, Hera shrugged. "Just me, by the sounds of it, sir?"

"Great. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what, sir?"

"Like the way that I looked at soldiers when I was in my teens."

Hera shrugged again. "You are impressive, sir? You went into Berlin as part of the initial scouting party? The other three members of your squad came back wounded or dead, and you made it without even minor injuries? I have been watching news from other parts of the world? Encounters with these aliens on the ground are rare, they usually zip by overhead? But the few times there have been direct encounters with them, they almost completely wipe out any human forces they meet with? You have become something of an icon of-"

"Are you unsure of yourself, Corporal Ingebergsdottir?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, I am not asking questions? It is just part of my- ahem." She seemed to gather herself. "Upward inflection. It is an aspect of the Icelandic accent. To other English speakers, it sounds as if we end many of our sentences in question marks. I try to control it, but it creeps back into my voice when I am no longer concentrating on it."

Renaldo grunted. "That might take some getting used to."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Not your fault, Corporal. Just wish we had some time to train as a unit before they threw us into the fire."

"Yes, sir. But war is rarely fair, is it sir?" The two shared a bitter glance, and Renaldo found himself smiling. He had a feeling he could get to like this woman.

"No, it isn't. And this one is unbalanced as shit. I doubt we're really going to make much of a dent in these alien bastards before they put us down."

"Well, at least you did put a dent in them during your last encounter, sir?" Her upward inflection had crept back into her speech, but Renaldo didn't comment on it. In stressful combat situations she wasn't going to be able to control it. Best start getting used to it now, he figured.

"Right. They have nasty weaponry, Corporal, but I think it's been proven at this point that they aren't invincible. Two of them are lying on Doctor Vahlen's autopsy tables right now." He adjusted his rifle's position in his lap, and shot her one of his patented crooked grins. "Let's fetch her some more, shall we?"

"Oorah, sir."

* * *

 **12:24 PM, Crash Site Zero, Algeria. 24** **˚49'13.4** **"** **N 1˚43'15.9** **"** **E**

The three helicopters each broke off and followed individual paths as they approached the wreck site, heading for the locations that Beta Squad had marked as safe landing zones. The one that carried Renaldo and team three approached low, keeping a rocky ridgeline between it and the downed UFO that lay somewhere just to the northeast. As the pilot eased the vehicle down in the indicated location, the doors slid open, letting in a blast of wind, a whirl of sand, and the blinding blaze of the North African sun. Since the aliens had already knocked all the GPS satellites out of commission, the pilot had to rely on a description that had been relayed to him by Beta squad on the ground rather than actual coordinates, but the place he wound up in was fairly close to the place that the Betas had been intending for him to land. No blasts of plasma interrupted the landing. No aliens went scampering for the hills as they saw the helicopter approaching.

"Alright, everybody out!" Renaldo shouted over the sound of the blades as soon as the landing struts came into contact with the ground. The eight soldiers, keeping their heads low, dropped down from the passenger doors, boots landing in the churning sand. Renaldo steadied himself, then gestured, and the team advanced into the desert towards the ridgeline and the crash site they knew lay beyond it. Behind them, the roar of engines surged, and the black bulk of the helicopter lifted again into the sky, turned in place, and banked away across the stony hills and out of sight.

When it was gone, Renaldo could speak again. He had used the time to his advantage, taking in his surroundings, and had already developed the first stage of their approach plan in his mind by the time the engines grew distant enough that he could speak and be heard. It was a rocky valley, about a kilometre across and three to five long, with sand pooled at the bottom of it but, fading to solid, dark brown stone at the edges, sloping up to looming ridgelines on each side. The slopes were shallow, nowhere near being cliffs and only maybe a hundred metres tall, but they were steep enough that climbing them too quickly in full gear would be tiring, especially given the dry heat that was already beginning to make him sweat under his ballistic vest. He adjusted the cloth covering that was keeping the sun off his head, and pushed the sunglasses further up his nose to cut out some more of the glare. Another hellish day in the Sahara. Getting his bearings, he looked more closely at the slope that would lead them to the crash site. It had been eroded in a step pattern. While the lack of vegetation made size and distance hard to judge at times, he thought the steps were about as tall as himself- perfect concealment against anything looking down from the ridgeline above. A second smaller sand-floored valley branched off of the one they were in about a kilometre along the valley wall, passing out of sight from this angle but seemingly going in the direction of the crash site. It would make for an easier approach, but Renaldo dismissed it at once. The smooth sandy floor of the valley wouldn't provide concealment during their approach, and walking through an open valley between two unsecured hills was just begging to be ambushed.

"Alright," he said, clapping his hands twice for attention, then indicated a patch of shade under an overhanging rock that jutted out from the side of the slope. "Everyone to that overhang. We'll discuss tactics once we're in concealment."

"Sir!" came the reply from seven throats, and the two squads began picking their way cautiously towards the rock, forming a straggling line across the sands.

As they walked, Renaldo tapped the button of his earpiece twice to switch to the frequency that would let him talk directly to base. "Team Three to Central, Team Three to Central. Eta and Iota squads are on site. Repeat, Eta and Iota have landed. We are at designated landing zone three. Please advise. Over."

A brief crackle of static greeted him, then turned into the Central's voice, warped and staticky but recognizable. "Acknowledged, Team Three. Other teams are also at designated coordinates. Advance with caution towards the bogey, but do not engage. When you reach the ridgeline, set up in overwatch positions, radio in to describe your position so we can put you up on the map, and then stand by for further orders. Over."

"Understood, sir. How far out is our backup? Over."

"The Algerians will be arriving within the next thirty minutes. Will update timetable as it changes. Over."

"Understood, Central. Team Three out." Garcia tapped his earpiece a third time, switching back to the team channel. They had tested the channel on the way in, but as they walked he had them do it again anyway. That done, he settled in to trudge through the sand, listening to the laboured breathing of the soldiers under his command.

They reached the overhang after a few minutes. It was large enough to shelter all of them and then some.

"Alright, everyone," Renaldo said, clapping again. "Here's the play: from here up to the top of the ridgeline there appear to be a set of stone steps. We will be using them as co-" he stopped himself before he could say cover. "...as concealment during our advance. Remember, there _is_ no hard cover on this battlefield. If you spot hostiles, hunker down in concealment and notify me immediately. If they open fire on you, pop smoke and move to better concealment, then wait for the rest of the team to get there. Nobody is to engage alone, and if escape is a possibility, take it. Understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" came the chorus of voices.

"Good. We will advance as squads. Eta will take left flank, Iota, myself included, will take right. Both squads should be within sight of each other, and maintain radio contact. Last thing: keep hydrated. I don't want anyone on my team dying from heatstroke during a firefight with aliens. That would be an embarrassing way to go." He heard chuckles. They were nervous, but sounded genuine and they did lighten the air a bit. In Renaldo's experience, most soldiers had a fatalistic sense of humour no matter where they came from. "So everyone: drink up, then move out."

* * *

 **12:43 PM, Crash Site Zero, Algeria.** **24°50'29.2"N 1°43'34.9"E**

Captain Chey Boran reflected, as he looked through his binocular at the valley below, that he was far too old to be off fighting aliens in some godforsaken desert. They had been the first on the ground, and hiking over rough terrain for the past hour had left an undeniable ache in his bones.

He had been a part of Beta Squad almost since X-com's initial formation, and had been in charge of it ever since its previous captain had retired nearly a decade ago when his visa to immigrate to the US had finally been approved after six years of waiting. chey was coming up on his 65th birthday, and had been hoping to follow the man's example. His own visa had passed through over a year ago, and he had been continuously saying over the course of the past few months that he was just sticking around long enough to see the "new guy" settle in. The new guy in question had been private Jackson, who had died at the hands of the aliens when he was sent into Berlin without his squad to back him up.

Now, he supposed, he would have to put his retirement plans on hold. Other things had come up.

The UFO below him was disk-shaped, that much was clear, and Chey would have chuckled at the classic sci-fi, 50s-ness of it, if he didn't know that the bastards had killed Ghoshal. Swatted him out of the sky with a gun mounted somewhere on that thing's dorsal side. There was no knowing whether said gun was still active, and if it was, advancing on the wreck was going to be hell. The valley's floor was covered with beige sand, stretching away almost perfectly flat, with only small dunes marring its surface. However, with the angle at which the beast had crashed, there was one whole side of it- almost a hundred and eighty degrees- where the bulk of the craft itself would be between the gun and any approaching troops.

He heard somebody drop down into the hollow beside him, and he lowered his binocular. It was private Injabi, a diminutive but deceptively strong Indian man, and the Betas' resident sniper.

"Anything?" Chey asked, indicating Injabi's own pair of binoculars.

"No, nothing so far, sir," Injabi replied. "Just sand and rocks. Is command _sure_ they saw movement at the crash site?"

"I think so. I am starting to think it was just the wind, though." He adjusted his position on his elbows to be more comfortable, and peered again through his binoculars. "Either that... or they've retreated into the UFO and are waiting for us to come to them. Maybe hoping to blow the crap out of us with that cannon of theirs on our way in."

"Yes, sir. There is another possibility, though."

"I know," Chey growled. His anger was not directed at Injabi, but at the possibility he was suggesting. If the aliens had done that, it would make their job a lot harder.

"They could have scattered into the hills," Injabi clarified.

"Yes, I know!" Chey repeated. His amplified gaze skimmed across the hulk of the craft below him. It looked to be about the size of a Chinook, a heavy helicopter that could transport upwards of forty troops if they were really crammed in there. There was no guessing how many aliens had been in that thing when it had crashed – that depended on whether it was a scout or a troop transport – or on how many might have survived, but given the fact that the craft still seemed almost entirely intact after crashing at a speed of close to 3000 km/h suggested the interior hadn't been severely damaged. Combined with the fact that the aliens were smaller than humans, that could mean there were upwards of forty or fifty of the little grey bastards running around out here.

After another moment, Chey shifted back more fully behind his cover. "Okay. Let's check in with Central, then move back along the ridge. I think that's enough scouting. Let's see about that Algerian army convoy we were promi-"

 _ **Blam!**_

* * *

Captain Chey had been just seventeen when the now-defunct Republic of Kampuchea had been formed by a military coup, but had already been part of the army for two years due to the civil war that raged throughout much of his youth. His father, and by extent himself, had been supporters of Lon Nol, and during the coup that established the republic they even helped to remove a local pro-Communist leader from power in his hometown. But then the genocide had started.

When the new regime ordered him to turn his rifle on civilians, Chey had found himself unable to do so, and, while escorting a group of forty innocent ethnic Lao prisoners to be executed, he had managed to convince his childhood friend Peng to disobey their orders. Still escorting the prisoners, the two had bluffed and threatened their way through no fewer than four checkpoints on their way out of town, and, knowing that Chey's father and the rest of their unit would be coming after them, they had escaped into the wilderness after freeing the prisoners and offering an opportunity to join them. They had crossed six hundred kilometres of jungle with only two rifles, a dozen bullets and their trapping and gathering skills, but after four months they had made it, half-starved and nearly dying of exhaustion and disease, to the French embassy in Myanmar, still with a dozen of their former prisoners in tow, requesting asylum with the little bits of the French language they knew. He had met his eventual wife in that embassy, where she had been working as a secretary for one of the officials.

In a blink of an eye, he was gone.

* * *

 **12:45 PM, 24°49'41.2"N 1°43'29.9"E**

As he picked his way cautiously across the plateau at the top of the ridge towards the distantly-seen metallic glint that marked the crash site in the valley below, Renaldo's earpiece crackled to life with a long-distance transmission. "Central to Team Three. Come in Team Three."

"Reading you, Central."

"Renaldo, listen," There was unmistakable concern in Bradford's voice, immediate cause for concern. Not much rattled Central enough that he would let his subordinates hear it, let alone use their first names in official communications. "Beta Team just got caught in an ambush. They're on another ridgeline a ways to your north, across a narrow valley. Do you see them? Over."

He hurried to the top of a small nearby ridge that was blocking his view to the north, and looked out over the valley beyond. "Please hold. Assessing situation. Over."

"Affirmative, Team Three." Central's audible concern had been fleeting. He was back to efficient professionalism. "Attempting to reach other teams. Central out."

Renaldo tapped the earpiece to switch to squad channels. "Ngomi, with me." The private hurried up straggling the line of soldiers next to him, regarding him with a questioning look. Renaldo was busy surveying the landscape. Distantly, he saw a flash of white on a hilltop over a kilometre away. "There, you see that?" he asked, pointing it out.

She nodded, already unslinging the long, narrow bulk of her sniper rifle from across her back. "Yes, sir."

The sound reached them, then. It wasn't gunfire. It sounded more like thunder. Long, rolling, and deep-throated. At the same time, another blast flickered out from the hilltop, this time not hitting stone and instead cleaving out into the air, a beam of white that roared off into the heavens and scattered into a brilliant plume over the valley.

"It's those plasma thrower things," Renaldo muttered. "Set up here, Ngomi. See if you can set up any shots. Corporal, you and one other set up and maintain a perimeter. The rest of you: squadsight."

X-com's painter binoculars were a specialized piece of technology, built in-house in the Sahara Base manufacturing facilities. They were bulky, hefty things, and the only part of X-com's standard kit that wouldn't be easily recognizable to soldiers from other organizations. It was included in their standard kit because of the assumption that advanced alien technologies would lead to wars being fought at extreme ranges. It looked like a heavy-duty set of binoculars, and really that's all it was. It had fine-tuned adjustable magnification, and was built to be ergonomic in the hand, improving stability and comfort of use. The most important part, though, was the high-power ultraviolet laser sight attached to it. This was intended to allow an entire squad to aid in the sniper's targeting efforts. If a squad member spotted an enemy through the binoculars, they could light it up with the targeting painter, which the electronic scopes on X-com sniper rifles could pick up and would then convert to visible light. This improved sniper performance in training scenarios, as it allowed them to focus on lining up shots rather than finding targets.

Now, five pairs came out all at once as the two squads lay down at the edge of a low cliff, and began scanning the hilltop nearly a kilometre and a half away.

Spindly shapes scampered over the hilltop, ducking from rock to rock and taking pot-shots with those devastating weapons. Every time they fired, the amplified light caused Renaldo to blink. Even from this far away, that green after-image painted itself on his retinas. He couldn't make out any of the human soldiers they were attacking, but he could tell from the aliens' movements where they must have been.

A loud crack announced Ngomi's first shot, and Renaldo zoomed out to see where it landed. He could make out a total of four of the little grey creatures, darting in and out of sight. Even numbers with Beta squad, but then again, it had been an ambush. After a second, they all visibly reacted to the bullet whizzing past, but it had no visible impact beyond that and a scattering of chipped stone from the cliff face behind them. The aliens looked over in their direction, blinking with huge, bulbous eyes and craning their long necks to try to get a bead on their attacker. He heard Ngomi cursing in Arabic as she adjusted her sights and then lined up a follow-up shot, and not for the first time he was hit with a pang of longing for Yasmeen to be there with him. _She could have made that shot,_ he thought, then banished it. That wasn't helpful. What was helpful would be to start painting targets. He picked one, centred it in his vision, steadied his hands, and then pressed down on the button that would activate the painter.

The reaction was immediate, and not at all what he had hoped. His chosen alien's eyes immediately rounded on him, and its gun rose to point in his direction. Renaldo's eyes widened, and he shouted "Down!" an instant before the muzzle of the alien's gun flared white. He ducked, and the rest of the team followed suit an instant before a curtain of white-hot plasma roared over the plateau, scattered and diffuse after travelling so far but still no doubt deadly if directly exposed. After losing so much cohesion, however, the blast no longer had the penetrating power to slice through the rocks the team hid behind, and, like they were sheltering from a gale, it parted around them, zipping past their huddled forms by mere centimetres before continuing on, shrieking like a banshee.

"Shit!" Renaldo spat, checking his body for burns. "Fuckers have UV vison. Okay, new plan, everyone: keep your-"

"Down!" interrupted Hera, and the few soldiers who had been trying to get back up instead huddled even closer to their cover as another wave of plasma washed over the hilltop, passing with a horrible shriek.

Once it had passed, Renaldo continued, surprising himself with his own levelheadedness. "Alright, listen! From where they are, they can't do any more than that. We haven't seen them use any other weapons yet, and given how they're dressed – or, more accurately, undressed – it doesn't seem likely they have anything else hidden away in inside pockets."

He actually heard a snort of laughter from Hera over the channel, in spite of their dire circumstances.

He opened his mouth to continue. "Point is-"

"Down!" shouted somebody new – possibly that Tibetan man, Kelsang.

Another shriek, another curtain of white death.

"Point is, we need to keep our heads about us. Don't use your binoculars' UV painters again. That's a mistake we only need to make once, and I'll be calling that bit of advice in to Central as soon as we get out of this. For the moment, we need to move. This cover won't last forever. Count off. Anyone injured?"

The two squads both reported in, each of them still with four names, each soldier reporting no injuries. "Good. Find a path that keeps cover between you and that gun, then move. Get as far away as you can-"

Another white-hot, shrieking curtain of fire roared past, but something was different about this one. It was louder, for one thing, and its heat was more intense. It chewed away at the edges of the stone he hid behind, leaving it noticeably smaller than it had been.

Once it had passed, Renaldo continued where he had left off. "We'll meet back up South of here, away from that group of aliens. Clear?"

He got no acknowledgements.

"Hello? Eta? Iota? Corporal?!"

"Sir!?" he heard shouted from somewhere off to his left. The Corporal's voice. But it was distant, not right in his ear where it should have been. "What happened?" she asked, sounding baffled.

"Not sure." He reconsidered, then corrected himself. "I think that last blast killed our earpieces. We're out of touch. Those things must output a lot of radiation."

"Alright. I can still here you, sir. And I can see the rest of the team, so if you speak up they should all be able to hear you."

"Thank you, Corporal," Renaldo said, adjusting his plan in his head as he spoke. "Okay. Fall back to the South, going cover to cover. Since we can no longer coordinate over a distance, we'll stay together and move as a group. Understood?"

This time, he did hear the chorus of affirmatives that he was looking for, though much further away than he would have liked.

"Then _move_!" he shouted. On the last word, Renaldo himself broke cover and sprinted towards another boulder, praying like hell.

* * *

 **12:54 PM, Xcom command center**

"Beta's gone, sir."

The three words, spoken from the otherwise near-silent tactical pit in the command centre, were flat, emotionless and efficient. Bradford leaned heavily on the rail and breathed a heavy sigh. "All of them?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," confirmed the man who had spoken. In spite of the levelness of his voice, tears glimmered in the corners of his eyes. He had listened to their transmissions as they had fought. He had heard their unfinished last words and their cries of distress.

Bradford forced himself to stand, then punched a command into his personal console. The blue flag that had marked Beta squad on the map vanished.

"Time to arrival on that convoy?" he asked.

"Any minute, sir," replied somebody from the pit. He immediately frowned and raised a hand to his earpiece. "Slash that, sir. They are on site now."

"Good. Contact all remaining teams, have them spread along the hills on the blind side of the saucer and await Algerian assistance. The commander of the Algerian military group will make the decision on how to proceed from-"

"Team Three is under fire!" interrupted a voice from the pit. "Long-distance skirmish from across the valley. Lieutenant Garcia has ordered a withdrawal."

"Acknowledged. Contact Garcia, tell him to rendezvous with the Algerian army group as they come up the slope."

"Sir, Team Two is under fire as well! Another ambush. Estimate five hostiles at marked coordinates." A new red ping lit up on the map. "They are taking casualties and attempting to fall back and form a firing line. They..."

"Team One under fire. Long distance skirmish with unknown number of aliens positioned in the dunes around the yoo-foe. One of their snipers is dead, the status of the other is unknown, and they have multiple wounded. Sir, they're pinned down." Another pulsing red dot appeared on the map, this one next to the crash site.

"Sir, Team Three is not responding to communications. Their earpieces return no pings."

Bradford looked over at the Commander to see him grimacing in indecision. He turned back towards the map, examined the display, and felt his jaw set. All their forces were engaged, and all of them were losing. This was not how this mission was meant to go.

"Contact their air support," he said, voice cold and calm. "Let's see what we can do for these people."

* * *

 **12:54 PM, 24°49'40.0"N 1°43'38.5"E**

Renaldo skidded down the hillside in a cascade of pebbles, hearing the rest of his team do the same around him. Even on his way down he was looking around, counting them constantly. _Still eight. Still eight. Still eight._

They reached the bottom of the steep incline and came to rest, a few of them collapsing into the sand.

Sand.

His pulse slowing, Renaldo examined their surroundings. They had descended further than he had thought. They were now on the valley's floor. To their right still towered the dark hills, but to their left low dunes, each only a little taller than Renaldo himself, stretched away towards another range of dark stone hills in the distance. His team stood by an outcropping of rock, having stopped right where the stone turned to the beige sand of the valley floor.

 _And,_ he realized, a chill running up his back, _just beyond that outcropping must be the crash site itself. We must be less than a kilometre from it._

He looked around at the troops. Hae Min-Chul, the heavy weapons specialist, had taken off his boot and was tipping sand and stones out of it. Hera had a medkit out and was tending to a minor burn that Ngomi had suffered when she had failed to get behind cover quite quickly enough during their mad scramble across the plateau. Most of the rest had sat down in the sand and taken canteens or water bottles out of their packs.

He wanted to call them to attention immediately, but he decided to give them a moment's rest. No more, though. Within a minute he clapped his hands twice and said "On your feet. Come on, look alive."

The soldiers scrambled to their feet and into parade rest, though Min-Chul did take the time to put his boots back on first.

"Alright, everyone. Just beyond this ridgeline," he pointed at the wall they had just descended "is the crashed UFO we were sent here for. If we go just around that way, we'll reach it."

He heard a few sharp intakes of breath as people realized where they were.

"Now, our mission is not to attack the craft. Our briefing made it clear, we are to remain hidden and to serve as scouts. It's my decision, therefore, that we will – what is it, private?"

One of Iota squad's, an Englishman by the name of Harris, had apparently lost focus on him, and had raised a hand to his ear.

"Sir, I'm... I'm getting something. My earpiece, it's working. At least, it's receiving. A little bit. I think I was pretty close to the edge of that bigger blast towards the end."

"So? What are they saying?" Renaldo asked.

"It's... hard to make out. Something about... Raven. Raven one and-" His face lit up. "Sir, they're calling in air support. The angels are on their way in to end this. They have multiple enemy positions marked on the map."

There were a few whoops and hollers of victory from the assembled troops, but Renaldo noted that the corporal wasn't joining in. In fact, she looked even paler than she usually did.

"Okay, quiet, Quiet!" he shouted over the din. He turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "What is is, corporal? Concerns?"

"Yes, sir? Did you see where that final, bigger blast came from?" she asked.

"No. I figured it was just that one of them had a bigger version of that weapon of theirs. The normal ones are one-handed, and I've been calling them plasma pistols in my head, so maybe one of them had a plasma rifle or something. Why, did you?"

"Yes, sir, I did?" Hera confirmed, her agitation causing her accent to strengthen and her sentences to begin inflecting upwards again. "Sir, that blast came from the crashed spaceship? Its cannon is still active?"

Renaldo parsed this as a question at first, and almost said 'I don't know' before he realized it was a statement. "Oh," was what he said instead, before the magnitude of the realization hit him. "Oh! Oh crap! That's an anti-craft, turreted weapon with rapid tracking, and we have aircraft inbound."

Hera merely nodded miserably.

"Private Harris," he said pointing at the young man. "See if you can raise Central and call off the airstrike. We can't lose those fighters."

"I'll try, sir," came the reply. Harris raised his hand to the earpiece, clicked the button twice, and said "Team Three transmitting to Central in the blind. Repeat, Team Three to Central in the blind. Do you read me, Central?" He waited a moment, tried again, and then again, repeating the same message each time. Then he turned to Renaldo and shook his head, a look of desperation in his eyes. "No response, sir. Just static."

Renaldo's brow creased. He looked over the soldiers before him, then looked at the ridge behind them. They all knew what lay on the other side. And, much as they wished otherwise, they knew what they would have to do about it. They were soldiers, and none of them were stupid.

"Alright, no point beating around the bush," he said. "Let's get this show on the road. Everyone should have their things together and be ready to go in sixty seconds. Let's go! We've got some pilots to save!"


	15. Sink or Swim Part 3

**1:01 PM, Crash Site Zero, Algeria, 24°49'59.9"N 1°43'41.9"E**

Renaldo clambered to the top of the dune, keeping low, and then slid on his back down the other side, dislodging a cavalcade of sand that rolled down the slope right along with him. He kept his rifle clutched tight across his chest the whole way, trying to keep its mechanism away from the clogging fine grains of sand under him.

It was uncomfortable going. His pack rode up his back every time, his mouth was parched even though he had taken a drink only a few minutes ago, and it felt like he now had half a tonne of dirt and dust inside his armour, but he gritted his teeth and bore it. They had to approach quickly while keeping out of sight as much as possible, and this was the best way to do that. The rest of the team followed along behind him, scattered slightly over the dunes and peeking over each one before they vaulted it, watching each other's backs as they went.

As Renaldo crested another dune, the hulking shape of the UFO loomed just ahead. Its disk shape was nearly a third buried in the sand, and had thrown a new dune full of stone chips out in front of it. In spite of that, it seemed quite intact, with the only visible damage being a small breach on the underside with scorch marks around the edges of it from where Yi's missiles had struck home. From this angle, it wasn't possible to see inside the hull breach or to tell whether it had made it into the interior of the ship. There were flattened portions around the edge of the disk, but they were apparently part of its design, as they were all placed, as far as he could tell, at 90 degree angles from one another. Each shimmered with what Renaldo immediately knew, although he had obviously never seen one before, must have been an energy shield. The air looked thick and semi-opaque, and it rippled with a rainbow of colours like an aerial oil slick.

He came to a stop, and indicated with hand signals for the rest to stop at the same dune. They slowly filtered in, all trudging up the slope behind him with their heads kept low, all stopping just before they crested the top. It had been tough going, with loose sand under their feet, and a couple looked on the verge of collapse. He gave those two a stern glance and mimed taking a drink. They nodded, and took off their packs. Renaldo sat down in the sand, keeping his head just below the horizon, and the rest followed suit and shuffled in closer to him at his gesture.

"Alright," he whispered. "We're approaching from an angle where the ship can't hit us. That's good. The gun's on the far side. Now, we have a problem. Anybody see a door?"

The others all shuffled up the slope and peered over it at the alien spacecraft beyond. After a few seconds of examining it, as one, they all shuffled back down, shaking their heads or muttering "no, sir."

"Well, let's get a bit closer, examine it better, see what we can learn. Ngomi, you're staying here on overwatch. Keep watch, and keep 'em off us if the xenos show their ugly faces, got it?"

"Yes, sir!" Ngomi whispered in reply, again producing her sniper rifle and easing it out over the dune. "This is a bit short as far as sniping ranges go, sir," she pointed out.

"I know. We'll have to make do. This is the first dune I've seen that's tall and close enough to give you decent sight lines on the wreck and the surrounding dunes." He pointed to another member of Iota, a private whose name he had momentarily forgotten. "Private, you stay with her. Watch her back, and if you get in a tight spot, you have the authority to order Ngomi to withdraw, and to choose which direction to do so. Can you do this, kid?" The young man nodded, his face pale, clutching his rifle to his chest. "You're sure?" prompted Renaldo. The kid took a steadying breath and nodded more decisively.

"I can do this, sir. You can count on me." His accent sounded eastern European.

"Good. Everyone else, with me. Min-chul, keep that rocket launcher ready. If we can't find a door, we may have to back off and make one of our own."

"Yessir." Min-Chul tapped the large tube across his back. "Got two HE and one AP for this baby. If I focus on that breach that's already there, I should be able to get us inside."

Renaldo reached over and patted him on his armored shoulder. "Good man. Let's go."

Six soldiers broke cover and vaulted over the dune, sliding down the far side and getting even more grit into their clothing.

* * *

Yi's fighter roared over the landscape, dunes flitting by beneath him as he came in low. He was well and truly supersonic, so the xenos wouldn't hear him coming. He would be in and gone before they knew what was going on, and the half dozen missiles and smart bombs on his wings would blow them to hell. He looked down at the digital map displayed on his instrumentation. Three red blips pulsed on it. His wingmen would take two of them, the ones out in the hills above the crash site.

He looked at the speedometer, then at his map. "This is Hurricane One. We are three minutes out. Three minutes to airstrike."

He adjusted his course slightly, fine-tuning his approach. He would be taking the third blip: the one tucked in between the dunes, right next to the wreck itself.

* * *

Team Three passed into the shadow of the UFO, their boots dislodging rivulets of the loose sand and pebbles that it had thrown up as it had crashed, which slid down into the deep groove it had left through the dunes. Their guns were held at the ready, but as of yet no hostiles had shown themselves.

 _Doesn't mean they're not there,_ Renaldo reminded himself. _These things are sneaky._

He took a brief look at the energy shields. It looked like there were doors behind them, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out how they were supposed to be shut down so that those doors could be reached, so it looked like they were going with plan B.

Renaldo and Hae Min-chul ducked in under the structure of the UFO while the rest kept watch, going down to their knees as they looked up into the breach above them. It wasn't especially deep, more or less just a crater in the armour of the craft, but they could see what looked like a glimmer of greenish light peeking through in a few places. The opening wasn't wide enough to get into, but it was deep enough.

"Gonna need a kick by the looks of it," he commented in a whisper.

Min-chul showed him a gruff smile and brushed his hand over the rocket launcher on his back. His heavy accent wasn't enough to mask the amusement in his voice. "Good thing we packed our kicking boots, then, sir. Come, I think I can get a good angle on it from back there a little ways." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, back towards the rest of the squad.

Renaldo gave him a nod and a thumbs up, then turned and began shuffling out from under the craft again. Min-chul followed along behind, already unshipping his launcher and starting to remove the special steel-walled backpack that went with it to store the rockets.

Renaldo gestured for everyone to withdraw out of the blast radius, and the team started to comply, but after a few steps private Harris came to a stop, holding up a hand for silence and pressing his other hand to his semi-damaged earpiece. He turned to Renaldo, pointed at the sky, tapped his wrist, and held up six fingers. Renaldo simply nodded. He gestured again, and Harris ran off through the sand to join the rest. Renaldo stayed behind with Min-chul, his head on the swivel, watching the dunes around them.

Min-chul had loaded the launcher and had it directed at the breach, steadied on his shoulder. He took a deep breath, shouted "Clear behind!" waited the necessary four seconds to give anyone behind him the time to get outside the area affected by the cone-shaped backblast behind the launcher, and then he let the rocket of the chain.

The world shook. The rocket roared out of the muzzle of the launcher and slammed dead centre into the breach, detonating and sending the whole UFO heaving briefly upwards before it settled back into its cushion of sand and rock, settling a bit lower than it had been before but, thankfully, not burying the breach itself. Explosive thunder rolled over the dunes, echoing back from the distant rocky hillsides beyond.

A breathless silence fell for a moment, as the smoke began to settle. Renaldo began to raise a hand to gesture the troops forward into the newly widened breach...

Then all hell broke loose.

First came the sound of Ngomi's sniper rifle, then the corporal shouting something that he couldn't understand in her heavy accent.

Then the world lit up with white flashes, and a roar of plasma discharge deafened him. Between the blasts, Renaldo could hear the comparatively dainty rattle of gunfire, and the snap of a sniper rifle.

"Cover! Find cover!" he shouted. On a whim, he gestured forward, toward the UFO. "Inside! It's made of resilient material, their weapons might not be able to penetrate it!"

He charged into the breach, sliding in under the hulk of the UFO, vaguely aware of at least two others following him. At the breach, he stopped and turned, taking in the battlefield. Two soldiers lay dead in glowing craters, the sand flash-glassed by the shots. The corpses had been made almost unrecognizable by the blasts that had hit them.

He spotted one of the greys, the "sectoids" as the lab folk called them, clambering over the ridge and aiming off into the distance in the direction where he had left Ngomi and her escort.

He raised his rifle and fired a burst at the creature, making it duck and weave then dive back behind the dunes.

Somebody slid past him, and up through the charred hole above them. Looking around, he could no longer see any living soldiers out in the open, and he could only hope that Ngomi and the private he had left with her (Levitzki, that was his name!) would be able to take care of themselves. There wasn't much he could do about them, and with his earpiece dead he couldn't even check. He spat a curse in Spanish, then hauled himself upward into the breach.

The inside of the spacecraft was dim and humid, and startlingly quiet compared to the roar of the firefight outside. After the glare of the desert Renaldo was completely blind. It took him a moment to realize he was still wearing his sunglasses, and he whipped them off immediately.

The saucer was, by the looks of it, all one room, 20 metres across, with its four doors set around the edges of it. Blocky machinery of unknown purpose filled the aft half of it, surrounding the breach with low cover, which he immediately ducked into. He couldn't immediately see beyond the piece he had his back to, but it was deathly quiet in the saucer. The dull green glow that illuminated the interior seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, with thin glowing trails of that colour running along the dark grey, metallic walls, and glassy-looking spots of it set in the floor around the perimeter of the room. Looming above them from among the machinery, a large, green glass cylinder pulsed with light, and a dull thrumming sound reverberated through the floor in synchronous harmony with the pulsing light.

Three other soldiers were also huddled behind the same piece of cover, all with their backs to the room, eyes locked on the hole. He looked more closely at them, making note of who he had left. Hera, Min-chul, and private Harris looked back at him, Harris with wide, panicked eyes, the other two simply looking for orders.

Spur of the moment. He pointed to Min-chul and Harris, then to the hole in the floor they had just clambered through, dust and light from the outside still filtering in. Min-chul nodded, adjusted his grip on his battle rifle, and fixed his sights on the breach. Kelsang simply sank into himself, his hands pressed against a nasty-looking burn on the side of his torso. It must have been a near miss. The kevlar had melted with the heat of the blast.

Renaldo wanted to pause, get him back in fighting shape, but they had limited time. He pointed to Hera, then indicated the left side of the machine they were sheltered behind. She nodded, and he turned to prepare to go around the right.

"Go," was all he said, and both whipped around the corners, remaining in partial cover, but moving to firing positions.

No blasts of white-hot plasma greeted them. Nothing else in the room moved besides the dust that had been kicked up by the rocket. In the centre of the chamber, a yellowish crystal suspended above a pedestal pulsated in harmony with the greenish machine and the low thrum.

Renaldo's eyes narrowed. He made a gesture, something that he and the Alphas had trained with, and started to move before realizing Hera wouldn't know what it meant.

"Check the door," he whispered. She nodded, and moved to the wall, edging along to the doorway. He watched her, adjusting to her speed, and they reached their respective doors at the same time. Renaldo could only assume that the other two were safe, since outside them was only dirt and rock.

Each door had a simple rectangular panel beside it. On a hunch, Renaldo pressed his, and the door slid open with a soft hiss.

Outside, he could see the desert, dimmed and distorted through the energy shield that covered the door. He checked outside, saw movement from the dunes, ducked back inside, and hit the panel again. The door slid shut.

He looked over at Hera, still peering out her own open door. After another moment, she ducked back inside, and keyed her own door shut again. Turning to him, she shook her head. "No hostiles," she mouthed, barely visible from this distance. Renaldo raised three fingers, pointed at the door, and then traced one finger around towards the breach. _Three xenos, moving to the breach. They'll be trying to come into the saucer at any moment._

Hera nodded her understanding, and started to move back towards the breach. Renaldo was starting to go with her, and was about to order the soldiers by the breach to move to the other side of the cover, placing it between them and the aliens' approach...

Then he stopped. The thrum had changed. And there was a sound coming from the centre of the room. He turned, and watched as the crystal hovering in the middle did...

 _Something._

Metallic chords slithered out of the ceiling and the pedestal, twisting and shifting as they came and forming a shape around the crystal. In less than a second, it became recognizable as humanoid, and Renaldo realized with a sickening drop of his stomach that he was watching a new enemy enter the battlefield.

"Hera! Cover!" he shouted, just as the thing stepped forward off the pedestal, yellowish energy surging across its frame and into the air around it, and a bulky-looking rifle forming in its hands. It was massive, easily seven feet tall. The crystal still floated in the middle of it, untouched by any of the cables but clearly serving as the creature's pulsating heart.

Renaldo threw himself towards the machinery just as the creature opened fire.

The blast shrieked past him, leaving a portion of the wall melted in a glowing orange crater, and sending sharp pain across his back as the beam's radiant heat burnt him through his ceramic armour. His back was on fire.

He rolled into cover and slammed his back against it, breathing heavily.

Across the room, he could hear Hera yelling something, but drowning out her own words with assault rifle fire. Heavy footfalls clattered across the room, and Hera's yelling became more panicked.

Renaldo hauled himself to his feet to see the creature bearing down on Hera. He switched his rifle over to fully automatic, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The muzzle barked, and he saw the bullets spark and ricochet off the monster's back. It rounded on him, and then, moving more quickly than he would have expected from something of its size and apparent weight, lunged to the side to get behind the cover provided by the pedestal it had stepped off of.

At that moment, the sectoids from outside started streaming into the breach. Min-chul was there to meet them, and the roar of his battle rifle echoed painfully in the tight space as the first alien through the breach fell back thrashing in pain, with half a dozen new holes punched in it.

The thing made of metal and crystal loosed another blast from its devastating weapon, melting part of the machine that Renaldo was hiding behind and forcing him back into full cover. He took a deep breath, eyes drifting shut for a moment as his heart pounded in his throat.

* * *

The hills were in sight. Major Yi's thumb moved onto the release button for the smart bombs. They were almost there.

"T-minus sixty seconds on airstrike," he said calmly into his headset.

* * *

"Sir!" shouted private Harris from his place near the breach. "Sir, we have one minute! The aircraft will be getting here in-"

 _ **Blam!**_

The rest of his sentence was lost in the sound of a plasma weapon discharge, followed by another roar from Min-chul's battle rifle. After a moment, Min-chul shouted "We're both fine! We're holding them over here! We're holding them, sir, you just focus on stopping the ship from firing!"

Another thunderous blast melted part of the wall above Renaldo's head.

"How are we supposed to do that?!" he demanded.

"Kill the crystal thing!?" shouted Hera from across the saucer. "It might be the pilot of this spacecraft!? Or the computer core!? It's our only shot, I think!?"

Renaldo squinted at the pulsating green tube. _That looks important,_ he thought. _But no telling what happens to us if we shatter it..._

"Fine!" he shouted to the rest of them, even as Min-chul's rifle opened up again, forcing a sectoid to back out through the breach for fear of being cut to pieces. "Hera, it's focused on me! I'll draw its fire, see if I can get you a flanking shot! Hit the crystal if you can, it looks like that's the thinking piece! On three!"

"Okay," he heard Hera reply, the worry evident in her voice. "One," she started.

"Two!" he shouted back.

 _ **Blam!**_

The robotic entity fired again at him, chipping another piece off his cover. There wasn't much left now. One more shot would probably destroy the cover and kill him anyway. It was a good thing he was moving.

"Three!" he heard Hera shout, and he lunged out of cover before he could second-guess himself.

* * *

Yi's thumb tensed on the fire button. He eased back on the joystick, starting to ascend over the last range of hills between him and the valley where the saucer had crashed.

Meanwhile, on the ground, the turret on the top of the saucer spun, pointing up at the top of the hills.

* * *

The first shot from the metallic monster cleaved clean through the cover Renaldo had just vacated. The second almost vaporized him, but he saw the direction of its aim and dropped to the ground just in time to avoid it. But that meant the third shot was aimed at a man on the ground, trying to scramble towards cover that was several seconds away. The rifle began to power back up, and Renaldo saw the glow of yellow course into the weapon and coalesce in the barrel.

Renaldo Garcia had joined the Venezuelan army in his youth, at a time when Venezuela was still a reasonably wealthy, oil-rich country well on its way to becoming part of the developed world. When the country began falling apart only a few years into his career, he did everything he could to try to prop up the government. That was his job. He had signed up to protect his country, and he had seen it as his noble calling to help his troubled nation through those trying times.

As the police militarized, though, and as protests became mobs, and mobs became food riots, Garcia had started to question his noble calling. When he was ordered to move against a poor neighbourhood and clear its occupants out for being unable to pay their taxes, even as the Venezuelan economy fell apart around them, Garcia had simply refused to take part, and had gone home. A few days later, when he saw soldiers brutalizing and threatening the occupants of the slums, or escorting them down the street at gunpoint, he had spoken to his superiors about it. When the land formerly taken up by that slum was then sold off to an American oil company, he couldn't take it anymore, and he had gone to speak before the UN. That was what had gotten him assigned to X-com. Many in the government had wanted to punish him more severely, but this situation had earned him the attention of the international community, and with foreign reporters watching they couldn't do anything more. By the time the media's attention turned to other matters, Renaldo had already been fully integrated into X-com's chain of command, and was out of reach of the politicians, who by that time had other things to worry about anyway, as their power bases fell apart under them.

There was a flash of movement, and suddenly Hera was beside the metallic monstrosity, close enough to reach out and touch it. Her rifle, empty hung loose at her side, but in her hand was her sidearm, gleaming evilly in the light of the crystal as she held it out.

Compared to the battle rifle's thunderous roar, the sound of the pistol was like a firecracker. Its effect, though, was immediate and satisfying. An otherworldly scream rent the air as the metal creature staggered to the side, hands flailing. Its rifle went off, and the blast went wide, melting a spot on the ceiling above Renaldo's head. Shocked to still be alive, and wishing to remain so, he rolled into cover, switched his rifle over to firing single shots, and popped up.

Cracks had appeared in the creature's crystaline heart, but it was still moving. It had rounded on Hera, and her second shot with the pistol careened off its metal exoskeleton.

* * *

Yi soared over the rocky plateau. He saw an outcropping of rock just ahead, and beyond that, he know, was the saucer. His thumbs began to press down on the fire button.

* * *

Renaldo's aim was true. The rifle cracked once, twice, three times, and three new spiderweb patterns of cracks appeared in the crystal, each glowing with the internal brilliance of the crystal. Hera's eyes went wide as its metal hand reached for her and grasped her by the arm.

There was a hiss from behind Renaldo. Light streamed in from the door behind him, illuminating the interior of the saucer in desert sunlight. He heard clicking sounds, and knew there must be a sectoid right behind him. In desperation, he lunged forward as searing plasma roared over his head, leaving his vision greenish with the after-image. Half blind, relying on memory alone, he raised his rifle and fired.

The metallic creature screamed again, and as his vision cleared, he saw it thrashing and writhing in the middle of the room, the metal of its body slowly disintegrating. Hera had been thrown backwards by its flailing, and was lying in a corner. He saw shards of the yellow crystal scattered on the ground at the creature's feet as its metal chords burned away, and it collapsed to its knees.

He turned around to face the door, seeing a sectoid looming in the doorway, its odd plasma weapon pointed towards him.

And then, suddenly, it was backlit not by the sun, but by bright orange flame.

The explosion from the smart bomb roared in through the door, jetting across the room, singing Renaldo but completely shredding the alien standing in the doorframe. It had just long enough to turn, blinking in surprise at the explosion, before the flames consumed it.

Renaldo struggled to his feet, blinking his dazzled eyes. Out beyond the saucer's door, the landscape was a smoking ruin. Nothing moved but the smoke. Nothing made a sound but the wind and the crackle of the flames. No more sectoids tried to crawl up through the breach in the floor, or to swarm in through the doors.

Silence fell in the saucer.

It was broken when Corporal Hera Ingebergsdottir shouted the biggest victory cheer of her life.

* * *

 _AN: There! What did I tell you? One week this time, not months and months. What's more, you'll be pleased to hear that I've written another couple of chapters already, and am working on more. I'm going to pace myself, space them out, but for the forseeable future I'm going to be moving to a regular Friday update schedule with this story. I'll try to hold myself to that and form it as a habit. With luck, this will mean no more protracted silences from me._


	16. Sink or Swim Part 4

"Here, take a look at this," called engineer Daniels to Moira Vahlen from under the looming hulk of the UFO.

Engineers were crawling all over the saucer's crash site like ants, making note of every detail of its design down to the specific angles and curve ratios of its plates. Daniels was lying on his back, tucked in under the saucer, examining two such plates. He was taking pictures and notes of the seams between the different segments of the armour.

Vahlen, dressed in desert cammo rather than her usual white lab coat and _still_ managing to look out of place, had been discussing something with one of the other members of their team. She heard him, looked over, handed the other engineer's notebook back to him, and trudged through the sand towards Daniels. She knelt down as she approached, running a hand along the curve of the saucer's hull just above her head, and took off her sunglasses as she passed into its shadow.

"Yes, Daniels?" she prompted, squatting beside him.

"Ma'am, take a look at this," he told her, shuffling to the side to make room. "These two plates don't match the rest of the ones around them."

"You're the analyst, Daniels. I doubt I'm going to see something you won't. So just tell me what you've found. There's a lot of other things for me to 'take a look at'."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. So, the rest of them are pitted and slightly rough, right? All over the underbelly of the craft. We're thinking so far that it's because it entered the atmosphere belly-down and the bottom is made of some sort of ablative shield. We'll need chemical tests to know for sure, but-"

"Yes, Daniels, I'm aware. What's different here?"

"These two aren't pitted. They're smooth, and the surface of them extends out beyond the rest. Ma'am, these two weren't ablated. Not at all."

Moira frowned in confusion. "How's that possible? It entered belly-down, there's no way that just two plates would go unaffected."

"My thoughts exactly. So, during my lunch break, I went looking through the field reports on this craft made by the fighting personnel, and it turns out that Major Yi reported landing at least five hits on it, including more than one to its engine block. Well, we've looked over the wreck, and we can only find the one hull breach. The other hits, we can't even tell where they _were_. And the engines... well, ma'am, we may not know what alien engines are supposed to look like, but one thing I'll tell you, the engine block on this thing sure doesn't _look_ like it got smashed by a barrage of air-to-air missiles."

"So... what are you thinking?" Even as she asked the question, he could see the realization dawning in her eyes.

"I'm thinking they were doing ground repairs," he confirmed before she could ask. "These two smooth plates, they were replacements for the damaged ones that had been here. They were trying to get airborne again. That's what the sectoids down near the wreck itself were doing. And ma'am... if they had repaired all but one of the hits by the time we got here... what would have happened if we had left this to the Algerian army? They were coming in on jeeps and _trucks!_ I've looked at that map, and they were still at least an hour out. By that time..."

"They might have had this thing back in the air," Moira finished, nodding grimly. "Alright. We'd better report this to the commander. You, meanwhile, go inside. See if you can find where they keep their spare parts, and if you can find it, take an inventory." She started to stand, though she couldn't go fully upright due to the hull of the saucer over her head. She ran a hand over the hull, only now noticing that another plate under her fingers felt oddly smooth and looked shiny and out of place next to its corroded neighbours. "In fact, I bet the Council of Nations will want to hear about this one," she muttered to herself.

* * *

The bald, deep-voiced man on the screen never showed his face. He was backlit in such a way as to conceal it.

"Commander. The members of this council are pleased with your performance in your recent mission, and have authorized me to grant you a bonus to your funding. So long as you keep up the good work, we will see to it that you have all that you need. Within reason, of course. Some resources must be held in reserve for individual national defence in this trying time."

The commander nodded, stony-faced, with his hands clasped behind his back. "I understand. We'll do our best, chairman."

"I'm glad to hear it. One more thing. A report has reached me from one of your field engineering teams, informing me that, had your soldiers not arrived as quickly as they did, the UFO may well have escaped our clutches, or even destroyed the Algerian convoy from the air. In light of this, and of the apparent ability for the aliens to repair their spacecraft on the ground, I am authorizing the construction of multiple new Skyrangers, to ensure that, whatever happens in this war, you and your forces will be able to reach the combat zone quickly and efficiently. This is a war of mobility, commander, and your Skyranger program may be our best hope for winning it."

"Yes, chairman. However, I do have to point out that the Skyranger is expensive, both to construct and to operate. In order to build more, it will take a considerable portion of our funding."

"The Chinese counsellor has offered to bankroll the project, in exchange for assured protection in the future. Send an estimate on the cost to me via this channel within the next two days, and I will ensure that you get the funding you need for this most critical of projects. Without those Skyrangers, your reach is limited to North Africa, and I think Berlin has proven that four soldiers dropping alone into a combat zone is a recipe for disaster."

"Understood, chairman."

"We will be in touch. Good luck, Commander." The screen cut to black and was replaced by the X-com logo.

* * *

The flames were dying, fading into the distance, their crackle receding into the rattle of the engine. It was a poorly maintained truck, rusty and with an engine that broke down every few minutes, and every time it did she had to get off and fix it by shooting the engine until it started working again. The rest of the time, she was riding in the back, with the barrels of water and baskets of food, trundling down a dusty road, looking back towards the fires behind them.

Renaldo was driving. That was silly. She told him she hadn't met him yet. She told him to stop messing up the story. He was supposed to meet her up ahead, along the road! She wanted to drive, but the water kept sloshing out of the barrels in the back of the truck and nobody else could help her steady them because their hands were tied up in their laps. She hadn't met the rest of them, but they kept trying to teach her Spanish so that they could ask her to untie their hands. She wanted to just untie them, but they wouldn't let her until she could ask them in Spanish whether they needed help.

The light was faint through her eyelids, and all the sounds had a fuzzy edge to them. She rolled her head to the side, trying to escape from the sound. It had been so peaceful. She just wanted to sleep a little longer.

"You said you wanted to drive, right?" asked Renaldo.

She nodded.

"You can take the wheel. But only if you wake up." His smile was warm. She just wanted to sleep. But she wanted to drive more.

"Promise?"

"Yeah. You've been in the back long enough. And I know Spanish better than you do."

That made sense.

Yasmeen Abulrashid's eyes slid slowly open. She was in a bed in the infirmary. She blinked at the ceiling. Somebody was snoring in the chair beside her bed. With great effort, she rolled her head to the side.

Renaldo was sitting beside her bed. His head was rolled back in what looked like an intensely uncomfortable position, and one of his hands was bandaged. He was clearly the worse for wear, looking tired and older than he had been before. A string of saliva reached down from his lip and into his beard. A smile tugged at the corners of Yasmeen's mouth.

She tried to speak, wet her lips, cleared her throat, then tried again. "Hey, you." Her voice was a dry rasp, barely above a whisper. She tried two more times, then, with a grunt of exertion, hauled one of her arms out from under the sheet – she noted with distaste that it was far thinner and less muscular than it had been last time she had seen it – and placed it on the man's knee.

Renaldo woke with a start, one hand snapping up to clap over his neck, wincing in pain as he straightened it.

"Have you been there this whole time?" she asked.

He blinked at her, bleary-eyed, then rubbed one eye with his thumb.

"Yasmeen?" he asked, matching her volume.

"Who else would I be?" she rasped, a tired smile creeping across her face. "This _is_ her hospital bed, after all. It would be a bit awkward if _mph mpmph!_ "

She was cut off when Renaldo leaped out of his chair and leaned forward, enveloping her in a tight hug. "Welcome back," was all he said. Yasmeen was taken off guard for a moment, then settled into it, her eyes drifting back shut, her own weakened arms rising and meeting over his back, and a sigh of relief overtaking her.

"It's good to be back," she mumbled into his neck. When he withdrew, sometime later, he had tears in his eyes. Strength had been returning to her arms throughout the embrace, and now she raised them and cracked her knuckles in the way that always made Renaldo flinch. "Alright. Enough of that. Call the doctor, then help me up. I have to get back in ass-kicking shape. Assuming, of course, that you didn't go ahead and win the whole damn war without me."

Renaldo laughed through his tears. "No! You think I'm that selfish? I never. I tell you, I left plenty for you! Even got myself burned by a plasma weapon myself, just to even the score a bit." He stood, smiling but still with tears streaming down his face, then parted the curtain that surrounded the bed and called the doctor over.

* * *

As Yasmeen found herself surrounded by nurses, examining her and testing various vital signs, removing electrodes and IVs from her skin and checking her reactions to various stimuli, Renaldo remained nearby, never out of sight. When she had dressed, back in her customary on-base garb of a simple black tank-top and cargo pants, he helped her to her feet and supported her, in her long, halting journey, to report to the personnel officer. Halfway there, as she stumbled and leaned against a wall, gritting her teeth at the unfairness of it all, he spotted Ngomi and Hera coming down the hall in the opposite direction. After introductions were made, Hera agreed to help them, taking Yasmeen's other arm across her shoulders and speeding up the process immensely, while Ngomi continued on her way, insisting that she needed some rack time.

"Hey, you know," Renaldo told Hera as they both leaned against the wall outside the personnel officer's office (Yasmeen having shaken off their hands and insisted on limping inside on her own), "You might have heard that the Alphas are down a couple members. With Yasmeen back up, once she's healed up a bit more and gone through some physical therapy, the Alphas should be heading back out into the field. Now, it's not technically my decision, but I have some pull with Central. I could see about... I mean, if you want to..."

Hera looked at him sidelong. "Renaldo, are you offering me the chance to become part of the squad that is going to carry humanity through this war? To spend time among big damn heroes like yourself and Yasmeen Abulrashid, the first human to ever kill an alien in this whole war?"

"Hey, if memory serves, you saved my ass and are one of, at this moment, exactly two people who have ever fought against an Outsider." At Yasmeen's questioning look, he clarified "That's what the science team is calling that crystal thing we fought."

She mimicked being lost in thought, a smile playing across her lips as she placed a finger on her chin. "Hmm, let me think?... Absolutely?"

"That a question, or a statement?"

She shoved him lightly in the chest. "A statement. You know full well it was?"

"Alright. Glad to have you." He started to turn away, but before he could go he felt a small but vise-like hand land on his arm. He turned around, and Hera hit him full force, shoving him up against the hard wall and kissing him like a tiny, warm tidal wave. He felt her standing on tiptoes, pressing into him, her hands on his shoulders, forming fists, bunching up the fabric of his uniform. She was conscious enough to leave him room to escape if he needed it, but otherwise giving way to desperation and intensity. He could taste fear in that kiss.

Renaldo became suddenly aware that the world was ending. Thousands of civilians were missing, and so far they had only won two, maybe three skirmishes against the alien threat. He hadn't heard from anyone outside the base in two weeks. He had almost died more than once in the past month. And here, a woman he had just met two days ago was kissing him like this might be her last day on Earth.

Fuck it.

He kissed her back.

* * *

 _AN: And that's the end of that arc! Hope you've enjoyed. Hopefully the next won't take as long to complete. If you have a name to suggest for an arc, leave it in a comment, and I'll consider it._

 _Next up, though: the Exhaustion arc._


End file.
